


Inevitability (or a Study of Life After Death)

by Redisaid



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Academia, And then they were both professors, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, In which I do my take on post-trauma Jaina, Jaina has bad coping skills again, Mentions of past abuse, Modern AU, Professors, Smut, Somewhat spicy, Sylvanas is a good egg, Temptation to change the name of this to Dr. Feelgood rising, it's all about the banter, short series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:34:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22414819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redisaid/pseuds/Redisaid
Summary: Professor Jaina Proudmoore is trying to work her way through a new start at Dalaran University. Life is good here. She's teaching a class she actually cares about, and students that actually want to learn. She can finally start over. She can finally move on from the man that she didn't realize was slowly killing her.Or can she?
Relationships: Jaina Proudmoore/Sylvanas Windrunner
Comments: 190
Kudos: 690





	1. Mausoleum

**Author's Note:**

> This short series is going to be dealing with some heavy subject matter, such as past abuse. Please avoid this one if this is a trigger for you. However, I will promise that it won't got into much detail about the abuse, and that the contents of the story center around the victim moving on from that. That said, I like to be very upfront about these things to make sure that everyone stays happy and healthy. Please take care of yourselves.
> 
> A special thank you to UninspiredPoet for making my write 7k in one night after a furious conversation about headcanons for this AU. What the fuck bro???

Even the bars here were different. They were all like this--exposed brick walls, dark-stained wood, plush leather couches around a weathered coffee table, a couple playing chess or backgammon or something with black and white pieces over in a corner. The music was low and soft, intermixing between instrumental pieces and thoughtful indie music with an artfulness that even Jaina could appreciate in her sour mood. And the wine? Well, the wine she had been drinking all night was exquisite, and worth the slightly too high price tag she was paying for it.

It was a bar she would have never been in, not during her previous life. There were no TVs to speak of, and if there were, Jaina was pretty certain they’d be playing C-SPAN or some classic film rather than showing football. The place didn’t smell like stale light beer either, or even of peanuts and fried food. No, there was a distinct air of old wood and expensive liquor--a smokiness and an age that belied the young faces that surrounded her, but perhaps not the topics of their conversations. 

But not all of them were young. It seemed like she had finally found the place where some of the older crowd in the town would hang out as well. Maybe they were fellow employees of the university. Jaina didn’t know. She didn’t know anyone yet, save the people that had hired her, and maybe a few other staff members she had passed on her way into the English building here and there. 

All she really knew for certain that night was that the wine was very good and that it was nice to be in a bar that had a consistent volume level, and not one that soared into a rage any time one team or another scored. Oh, right, and that she didn’t feel as though she belonged here, but that was another matter entirely.

“Manhattan, please,” a soft voice spoke next to Jaina as a slender body wormed its way in between her seat and the one of the student that was sitting next to her, engaged in deep conversation with his lab partner about some sort of science thing she didn’t care to understand.

Jaina had just enough wine in her to let the comment that roiled around in her head slip from her lips as well, “My grandmother used to drink Manhattans. That’s still a thing people order?”

“You grandmother had good taste then.”

Jaina turned to find the owner of that voice--quiet, but smooth and confident, unfaltering in its rebuttal--was thankfully not another student. She wasn’t sure what this woman was. A high elf in a sweater and jeans. Not much in the way of makeup, but perhaps the thick rims of her glasses and the shadows of the dim pub lighting were covering it. A few understated earrings along her long ears. Platinum hair in a bun that was falling apart at the end of a long day. 

“Maybe, but whiskey makes people mean,” Jaina offered as she turned to take her in.

“I would say that depends very much on the person drinking it,” the elven woman countered again.

“What does it make you then?” Jaina dared to ask.

“Tired, usually. Prone to conversation with strangers, perhaps,” she answered.

“Really now?” Jaina wondered.

“We’ll have to see once I get my drink, won’t we?”

Jaina didn’t have anything to say to that. Her tongue faltered, sticking to her mouth, dry from the wine and stilled by having someone that could actually keep up with it. 

The other woman stuck out a hand to shake. “Sylvanas,” she offered her name.

“Jaina,” she offered in turn, finding that this Sylvanas had a very professional handshake. Definitely some sort of university employee. She didn’t have the crust of a professor, though, or at least wasn’t as ancient-looking as the rest of the staff here seemed to be. Maybe an admin? Or a PHD student? Damn elves. It was so hard to tell their age to get a clue for these things.

What did it matter anyway?

“I haven’t seen you here before, Jaina,” Sylvanas noted as she turned briefly to check on the status of her drink. The bartender seemed to be putting far too much care into it, mixing the rye, vermouth, and bitters, and even skewering the customary cherry for her.

“I haven’t been here before,” Jaina informed her. “Just moved in a few weeks ago.”

“Ah well, welcome to Dalaran,” Sylvanas said with a nod. The bartender handed off her drink then, a little piece of art, and she offered more than enough in the way of money to cover it, and insisted he take the change with a mere wave of her hand. “To your new beginning here then,” she said as she lifted her glass just a little in an impromptu toast.

“Yeah, to that,” Jaina said as she lifted her own glass, and polished off the end of serving number three of wine.

The bartender immediately offered to pour her another, and she immediately accepted. She wasn’t out here to socialize. Or at least, that hadn’t been the plan. Jaina was here because she would rather get drunk than look through the boxes she still had left to unpack. Her furniture was all assembled now. Her pots and pans were brand new. Her dishes only came in the plastic and paper variety, for now. Her clothes even were mostly newly purchased, being that the dress code here was mostly one of expectations, and that Jaina had felt she looked far too shabby in her first few lectures to even compare. So of course the clothes were new and nicer than anything she’d ever owned before. Only those few boxes were from before, things she didn’t want to part with, but now couldn’t bring herself to even look at.

So yes, getting drunk enough to forget about them for another twenty-four hours or so seemed to be the most logical alternative she could think of at the time.

“Ah the house red. It’s really excellent here, isn’t it?” Sylvanas kept talking to her. “I prefer wine with food myself, but that’s a solid choice.”

“Better than grandma drinks,” Jaina noted. She half-hoped to scare the woman off with her cranky responses. Her plan had been to drink alone, but not alone enough to be sad about it. Surrounded by other people, but not engaged by them. It was a place she found herself often these days, often enough to be comfortable in it.

But this. This was not part of the plan.

Nor was the student next to her getting up to leave. Nor was Sylvanas gladly thanking him and taking his seat.

“To each their own,” she said as she gracefully settled her thin, elven frame onto the barstool. “So, where were you before Dalaran?”

“Lordaeron,” Jaina sighed. The word still had a sting to it. Not as much as it had a few months ago, but enough that she had to wash it down with another sip of wine.

“There are worse places,” Sylvanas said with a laugh at her tone.

“Not many,” Jaina noted. “But I have to say it’s nice to be somewhere that doesn’t make me feel like I’m losing brain cells by the minute.”

“Only that you don’t have enough of them,” Sylvanas quickly added.

“Too real, Sylvanas, too real,” Jaina said as she lifted her glass again and took another sip of her wine.

“You seem to be enjoying that red at record pace,” Sylvanas said even over the rim of her own glass as she took a rather dainty sip of her stronger drink.

“That’s generally what one does at a bar, right?” Jaina asked. “Drink?”

Sylvanas laughed again. Her laugh was as smooth as anything else she’d since said. Warm and soft, like bread fresh out the oven. “In Kul Tiras, maybe.”

“Hmm, so I’m that drunk already.” Jaina hadn’t realized her accent was slipping. The flat Lordaeron tones she had so desperately drilled herself into usually fell away when she drank. So much so that she would usually abstain for fear of embarrassing herself. Now? What did it matter? 

It didn’t.

“You know,” Sylvanas steered away instead, “They have an excellent cheese plate here. Crackers, pickles, mustard. All the good stuff. All excellent with that wine. Perhaps just as good with seltzer.”

“I didn’t drive here,” Jaina informed her. “I walked. My place is a block away. No need to try to be the white knight sobering me up, though I do appreciate the sentiment.”

“I only thought to offer,” Sylvanas said. “Not to judge. My conversation and this whiskey’s potential are still yours for as long as you feel like entertaining them. So what would you rather do with them than eat cheese?”

Jaina eyed the room. It was getting late. The students were starting to filter out now, actually being responsible enough to go home and prepare for their classes the following day. Imagine that. 

But that did leave some advantages for her.

“Come sit on that couch with me and keep talking?” Jaina asked as she nodded toward an empty loveseat near the center of the pub.

The loveseat was far too comfortable. It’s leather was a bit worn, but in a way that made it shape to Jaina all the better. It hugged her skirt-clad hips, taking pressure off of feet that had spent too long in a new pair of heels, not yet properly broken in. 

And well, Sylvanas was just very nice-looking sitting next to her there, leaning up against the opposite arm with her slightly crooked smile. When had she gotten so attractive? Hadn’t Jaina just thought she was plain and boring?

Funny how things can change. So quickly. So unexpectedly. And for such small, seemingly unimportant reasons.

So by the time Sylvanas was bringing her glass number five of the red, Jaina had changed her plans for the evening. There would be no more thoughts about boxes. No more lamenting Lordaeron and all the things she’d left behind there--things that could not or would not ever end up in those boxes. No, she wouldn’t even give herself time to worry about not fitting in here, in this academic city full of academic people, where everyone was smarter than the next person. Where they had her teaching a four hundred level class that she was barely qualified for, one that she was pretty sure most of her own students could teach better than her.

No, instead, Jaina would think about how she was going to get this attractive as fuck elf to come home with her. This attractive elf, as intelligent as anyone in this city, but who never seemed to make her feel like an idiot, despite the fact that in that moment, she was indeed a wine drunk idiot.

“I’m just saying that this place has a reputation,” Jaina told her as she took the glass from Sylvanas and watched the elf settle back into her corner of the couch again.

“For smelling its own farts?” Sylvanas offered to complete that sentence.

Jaina still had no idea what she was, or what she did here in Dalaran. “Yes, but also for packaging up those farts and selling them as ‘artisanal air’ and charging fifty bucks a sniff.”

Sylvanas’ laugh was still warm and smooth, but maybe a little less than elegant at that comment. “I’d say that’s a fair description. In general? Yes. Always? No.”

Jaina slid across the couch then, definitely noticing that the tweed of her pencil skirt was catching on the leather and hiking up as a result, but she counted that as a windfall instead of correcting it. “And you view yourself as an exception? As the not always?”

To her credit, Sylvanas didn’t balk at the sudden invasion of her couch cushion. In fact, she just subtly shifted to be sure Jaina had enough room to fit on it with her without the risk of sliding off. Subtly enough that Jaina didn’t notice it until she was surprised to find her back hitting the pillows on the couch that Sylvanas’ arm had been blocking just a moment before. 

“I like to think so. Wouldn’t you? Or are you one of the academic types that is just happy to be selling anything?” Sylvanas asked in return. 

She always had a question for every question. And Jaina had another for each of hers. They’d been a loop for a good hour now, and with anyone else in the world, Jaina might have found it tiring. With Sylvanas, for some reason, it was engaging. In fact, it was just about the only thing keeping her out of the haze in that moment. For better or for worse.

“Who says I’m an academic?” Jaina countered.

“You’re wearing tweed, for one,” Sylvanas pointed out. 

“I’m...just trying to fit in,” Jaina answered all too honestly. She had gotten used to teaching in cheap blouses covered up by team sweatshirts. She had gotten used to teaching in a place where the sports had mattered more than the subject matter, and where she was constantly pressured to change the grades of certain students to reflect that.

She had gotten used to a lot of things there in Lordaeron. A lot of things she should never have agreed to in the first place. A lot of things that were so much worse in hindsight than they were even when she was experiencing them. A lot of things she, lest she forget, was here to drink away.

But Sylvanas laughed at her joke and didn’t need to know how true it was. She was still interested in her. She wasn’t pushing her away. “What do you teach?” she asked.

“Literature,” Jaina told her.

“That’s broad,” Sylvanas pried. She took a sip from her second Manhattan and set it aside on the coffee table in front of them. 

“Fine, fine,” Jaina relented. “English 445, The Modern Novel.”

“Still broad, but a worthy subject,” Sylvanas said as she settled back into the couch. Her sleeves had gotten rolled up at some point in the night. Jaina only just noticed them then, though, as her wiry forearm flexed against the armrest.

Well she definitely wasn’t a professor then. She actually had muscle tone, and a tan no less. A very nice tan.

“Most people hear that and ask me if I teach Steven King and Dean Koontz. How I like espousing the literary worth of airport books,” Jaina snorted. 

Just then, a waiter came up to them and put two tall glasses down on the coffee table. “Two lemon seltzers,” he said to Sylvanas.

“Thank you,” she said with a nod, immediately taking hers and sipping from the straw before she added, “Again, not judging. We’ve been talking for a while and my throat was dry. Alcohol wasn’t helping. I figured you would be in the same boat.”

“Let me guess, they make their seltzer in house here and it’s delightful?” Jaina asked as she took the glass. Because fuck it, she was thirsty. Her mouth felt like it was full of wine-flavored glue paste. She hadn’t wanted to complain or stop talking, though. The plan was still to get drunk and stay that way. It had just evolved into one that might include sleeping with this woman, if she could manage it.

“Of course they do, and delightful is a great word for it,” Sylvanas agreed as she took another sip. “Just the kind of excellent vocabulary I’d expect from an expert on airport novels.”

“Oh please, your sweater alone says you know exactly what time period modern really defines and that I don’t teach last year’s best selling crime thrillers,” Jaina laughed. Actually laughed. At herself, but she laughed. 

She took a sip of the lemon seltzer. It was never her favorite, but there was a sweetness to this one that made it tolerable. Best of all was how it immediately washed the dryness from her mouth, though. That was indeed delightful.

“It’s not tweed, though,” Sylvanas said.

The night went on. Another glass of wine came and went, and another seltzer to go with it. Sylvanas was running very low on personal space, but never ran out of questions. Not even as Jaina slid into the length of her arm, or as that arm draped around her shoulders, and one of Sylvanas’ fingers started to trace a pattern across the top of Jaina’s back. 

By the end of glass number six, it was clear to Jaina that her plan for the night and Sylvanas’ were in alignment. 

“It’s almost closing time, you know,” Sylvanas said after a glance at her watch. Not her phone. Never her phone. Jaina was pretty sure she’d felt the corner of it jabbing her from the front pocket of Sylvanas’ jeans, but she’d never seen her pull it out this whole time. 

Meanwhile, she kept her own phone buried deep at the bottom of her bag. It was a burner. She didn’t need to have a beautiful woman questioning why she had an obvious burner phone.

Plus damn, Jaina had no idea she was into women that wore men’s watches, but that was a thing she’d learned about herself over the course of the evening. A very enlightening evening in more ways than one.

“I wasn’t lying before. My place really is a block away,” Jaina offered, digging deep into herself and past the inhibitions that even the wine couldn’t chase away to find a sultry tone that she hadn’t used in far too many years.

It sounded weird. But everything was weird. Everything was different and new and frightening, but not nearly as frightening as what came before.

“Oh, good. I was afraid I was going to have to do something about you on this couch, the way you keep pressing into me,” Sylvanas uttered under her breath.

And fuck if that didn’t sound weird at all. It was so confident, but soft and whispered. Jaina knew the heat that rushed into her cheeks then had nothing to do with the alcohol. Fuck. How long had it been since she was turned on? Like, really turned on? And without more than just a few glancing touches along her shoulder? Without anything but a frustratingly smart conversation and Sylvanas’ whiskey-sweet breath against her ear?

Too long.

“Stay right there for now then,” Jaina said with a press against Sylvanas’ shoulder as she tried to extract herself from the couch and her new companion for the night with some dignity. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m settling my tab and then you’re coming with me.”

Jaina owed a ridiculous amount of money for six glasses of wine. But at least living in a pricey new city came with a paycheck to match. She could afford it. And she didn’t owe anyone else a damn dime of it. Yet she had to remind herself of that, even as she hesitated to sign the receipt. She hated that. She hated that she still faltered, still thought about things this way.

But no, she was here to forget. To move on.

To fuck this stranger who wouldn’t let her stop talking all night, instead of telling her to shut up.

“You didn’t leave,” Jaina said as she found that Sylvanas was still on the couch, smiling up at her as she came back to collect her.

“If anyone has in the past, they’re an idiot,” Sylvanas observed as she stood, steadily, seemingly unaffected by her cocktails. She offered her arm, like some sort of gentleman. Like something out of an old black and white movie. Cheesy. Fake. Mocking, almost. Like she didn’t mean what she had just said.

But no, not at all. Not any of that. Jaina almost had to shake those thoughts from herself physically. Instead, she settled on taking Sylvanas’ arm and leading her down the block to her apartment, an airy walkup over the corner store. It smelled like bagels and coffee every morning and encouraged Jaina to spend too much of her generous salary on newspapers and candy, but it was home. For now.

Home with white, barren walls. Home with flat pack furniture that she always ended having too many screws left over for. Home with nothing in the fridge but condiments and a half-drunk jug of milk. Home with her books still lying in a pile next to the TV console, because she hadn’t found a shelf worthy of them yet. Home with a second bedroom, with it’s closed door that she had been able to bring herself to open since she shut her old life behind it. Home where she was realizing that what she really needed to live on her own was not that much at all. 

“I’m still unpacking, so please excuse the mess,” Jaina said as she held open the door.

“I’m sure you probably think it’s much worse than it actually is,” Sylvanas told her before she even walked in.

That was true. There was no mess. Maybe a stray ketchup packet left on the kitchen counter. The mess was that there was nothing there. That it didn’t look like a person lived here. 

But Sylvanas didn’t seem to care.

“Do you want anything? I’m afraid I don’t have the skills or ingredients required to make a Manhattan. I do, however, have a bottle of decent vodka in the freezer and an excellent ice dispenser,” Jaina offered her as she slipped out of her heels with a relieved little sigh to herself.

“A woman of taste,” Sylvanas noted. She had immediately made her way over to Jaina’s books and was bending over the pile to snoop on them. It was as expected as it was mildly adorable. “I’m fine, though. Thank you for asking.”

“What about a tour?” Jaina asked as she shrugged out of her blazer and tossed it over the couch, and her bag after it.

“If the tour involves the bedroom, then yes,” Sylvanas said. Even without the lingering presence of the few others that had stayed that late at the bar with them, she still nearly whispered this. And there was something that was just so fucking sexy about that. Something Jaina could not comprehend the reason of it. But it was. It just was.

Still, she recovered enough to keep up the pace of their banter. A banter that had a rhythm to it, not unlike the poetry she had so loved to study when she was getting all these degrees of hers. That felt like so long ago. “So forward, Ms. I don’t even know your last name.”

“Windrunner,” Sylvanas replied, not missing a beat. She turned around with an expectant look.

“Proudmoore,” Jaina offered, hoping that would satisfy the quirk of that long elven eyebrow.

It did. “Professor Proudmoore does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” Sylvanas said with a smile. “Now, about that bedroom?”

“Still very forward for a woman who hasn’t even so much as kissed me yet,” Jaina protested even as she drew herself up to Sylvanas, gripping at the front of that blasted sweater to bring her closer.

And for once, Sylvanas had nothing to say. Nothing to question or misdirect or turn into another topic. She just kissed Jaina. She kissed her with warm, soft lips. With direct intent, but a gentleness. A seeking request, only parting just slightly, just enough for her to run her tongue across Jaina’s bottom lip, then closing again. 

“Will that do, Professor Proudmoore?”

The question came whispered against her lips, with hints of the fire of whiskey and the sweetness of Maraschino cherries. Maybe a hint of lemon too. And a promise of something that was a bit more than Jaina could really handle.

But something she very much wanted.

Jaina decided to follow her example and simply took Sylvanas’ hand and lead her into the master bedroom. The one that wasn’t forbidden. The one with the plain, white wooden bedframe and the new mattress she still wasn’t sure if she liked or not. But it was all hers. Just hers. Only hers. Hers to do whatever she wanted with, even if that was to bring a stranger into it.

And yes, Jaina had to remind herself of that fact before she could sit on the sheets and invite Sylvanas to join her.

But Sylvanas did just that. And she didn’t ask any more questions. She didn’t make a comment about there being a night light in the room. Or that the bed was unmade. Or that one side of it had been stacked up with pillows that Jaina had quickly and unceremoniously shoved onto the floor. 

She was too busy for such questions and observations. Her hands instead were tracing gently over Jaina’s frame, testing where they could touch, asking their own questions without words. Her lips were busy ghosting over Jaina’s. Just hinting at what could be given. Just barely scratching the surface of an itch that both of them shared. 

It would have been easy for her to just devour Jaina there. To just take whatever she was offering and give all too much back. But Sylvanas was cautious. She was gentle. She was both a familiar and unfamiliar weight on top of Jaina. 

And she had one more question for her. “Okay?” she breathed against Jaina’s ear.

Jaina swallowed back the sarcastic comment she wanted to make to that. About how she hadn’t been okay since she was an undergrad still, but that never stopped her. Because fuck that. She could be okay. She could do whatever she wanted. She was free now.

“Very okay,” she answered to Sylvanas’ neck as she performed a test of her own with her lips against her pulse point.

And fuck. Sylvanas’ heart was beating fast. For all of her cool confidence, she was just as excited as Jaina was. Just as into it. Jaina knew that elves ran hot, but the skin beneath her lips, and the fingertips she was just daring to push under that sweater was very, very warm. 

“Can we take this off you?” Jaina asked as she tugged at the hemline of the sweater, just as concerned for how warm Sylvanas was as she was curious about what lay underneath.

“By all means,” Sylvanas answered as she moved to tug the sweater off and over her head.

She was wearing a cami underneath it. A thin, silky cami that was just as hot as her skin. A white one that showed the bra beneath it. But her stomach was taut. Her breasts were on the smaller side, but soft as they brushed back against Jaina’s own when she laid back down on her. Her arms too were solid, but small. 

So different. Different enough that maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe, this time, Jaina wouldn’t have to think about anything else. She could just enjoy it. She could just be with someone.

Sylvanas caught her in blazing kiss then, one that didn’t hold much back. Now that she had permission. Now that her clothes were starting to come off. Her tongue could be both hard and soft, Jaina found out. And those teeth? Those were different. God were they fucking different, catching at her lips with their points, but never breaking skin. Just hinting that they were very capable of such things. But the control? The ability to not do it? That was what was wildly sensual about the whole thing.

Sylvana’s jeans traveled down her legs at some point then, and got kicked off into the pile of pillows on the floor, revealing a cute pair of black boyshorts beneath them. Jaina’s blouse found itself unbuttoned, and with it Sylvanas pressing kisses to the tops of her breasts, just above her bra. The pencil skirt was next to go, unzipped by deft hands and left for Jaina to shimmy out of. She hadn’t bothered with nylons that day, because she’d just shaved, and she was glad for both of those things. 

“You’re exquisite Professor Proudmoore,” Sylvanas said as she ran a still too-warm hand over a thankfully smooth leg.

“I should have never told you my name,” Jaina replied with a laugh, despite the fact that she did enjoy hearing it with the touch of honeyed sin that Sylvanas’ voice had been carrying since she’d brought her up here.

“Fine then. You’re as lovely as your conversation skills, Jaina,” Sylvanas tried instead as she hooked a finger into the waistband of Jaina’s panties and started to slowly pull them down.

“Can you say it again?” Jaina asked, her eyes immediately snapping to the hand that was threatening to totally expose her lower half, inch by inch.

“What?”

“My name.”

“Jaina,” Sylvanas purred, actually purred this time. 

Jaina could feel the fabric pull away from her then. She could feel how wet she was, how cold the air of her bedroom was on the hot skin that was now exposed to it. She wanted her. She wanted her so much.

But there it was again. Her old friend disgust boiled up from her belly into her throat. Like bile and heartburn combined. It screamed. Jaina wanted to scream. 

Instead, she just uttered one little phrase, “Can...can you give me a second?”

Sylvanas immediately rolled off of her. Off to that side of the bed that no one used. The one that was piled high with pillows, shaped to simulate something, anything on the other side of her. Because Jaina was still trying to get used to sleeping alone. She was still trying to be angry at herself for not being able to. 

And for some reason, seeing Sylvanas there was worse. It was so much worse. She tugged her underwear back up and rolled off the bed to stand beside it.

“Are you all right?” Sylvanas immediately asked, eyes wide.

“I’m…” Jaina didn’t have an answer. Not one that had word to it. She instead paced around the foot of the bed. Once. Twice. Three times. “Fuck.”

“Can I do anything?” Sylvanas tried instead. “Did I do anything?”

A frustrated growl was all Jaina could get out then. Why? Why did this always happen? Why was it still happening? It was a year ago already. She was a grown woman. She had a respectable career, or at least now she did. Why couldn’t she just get over this?

Sylvanas stopped asking questions. She just looked up at Jaina with concern, and watched her pace. 

Jaina gnawed at her lip. She at least owed this woman an explanation. But god, saying the words...no. She could do that much at least, right? 

“Listen, this isn’t because I don’t want to fuck you. You are incredibly hot and very smart and I like you a lot, just to be clear,” Jaina started.

“I mean, it seemed like you very much wanted that until a minute ago,” Sylvanas observed.

“I still do, which is the fucked part of it,” Jaina continued. “But...I don’t think I can. Not tonight. I’m sorry.”

The others she had made it this far with were already out the door by this point. And honestly, she had stopped them earlier. Any hand on her was enough at first. Then any attempt to remove her clothes. Kissing? God. That had taken months to handle.

Still, Jaina kept trying to bring people home with her. She thought that changing where that home was would help. That having new furniture, new sheets, new everything would chase it away.

But no, she was still the same. She hadn’t changed. Not yet.

But Sylvanas didn’t leave. She didn’t even try to get dressed. She just looked up, still concerned. 

The words kept spilling out. “I...I just got out of a relationship that--Fuck I was just an idiot, all right? We’d been together since undergrad. I should have left even then, but I stayed with him for ten years. He treated me like dirt.”

And so the questions started again. “Did he hurt you?” 

“I guess? I told you. I was an idiot. I didn’t think it was hurting me at the time. I thought everyone just did what I did,” Jaina went on. She wasn’t content with her current area of pacing, and moved off toward the closet. The moonlight shone through the blinds there, striping her like a frantic, indecisive zebra and she moved in and out of it. 

“It sounds like he did, though,” Sylvanas said. She had crawled up toward the edge of the bed facing Jaina, but stayed firmly planted on it.

“I was pretty sure that it was normal to be made to have sex when you didn’t want to, okay? He didn’t slap me around or anything. When he tried, I left him. I actually fucking left him. But now, whenever I just try to have a good time with someone else, all I can think about are his stupid meaty hands on me, and I just fucking can’t do it,” Jaina was shouting now. Her Kul Tiran accent was slipping hard, curving the edges of the words into strange sounds. Strange because they were coming out of her own throat.

“Well, then we’re not going to do anything that makes you feel that way,” Sylvanas stated firmly. She slung her slender legs beneath her and stood up, then reached down to the nightstand to retrieve her glasses, which Jaina had set there after they got in the way of kissing her before.

“Sorry to unload this on you. You didn’t sign up for this. Please just go,” Jaina said as she stopped for a moment to turn and face her.

“Unless you’re going to insist, I won’t go,” Sylvanas said as she started to walk toward Jaina.

Jaina flinched. She actually flinched. And it hurt her so much. It hurt to feel her muscles react like that. 

But Sylvanas didn’t even make a face at it. She just walked past her and into the bathroom.

“What are you doing?” Jaina asked.

“Getting you some water,” Sylvanas answered, just before turning on the tap to corroborate herself. 

“Why? You don’t have to. You came here to have sex with me. That’s not happening. You can go. It’s fine, really,” Jaina stammered as she turned around to see Sylvanas standing in the doorway and holding a paper cup.

“It’s not fine, is it?” Sylvanas asked as she handed it to her. Always a question. Always something more. 

Jaina almost couldn’t stand it. But she took the water anyway. She took a drink of it as Sylvanas watched her with her glowing, analytical eyes. The water was cold and sharp, a welcome contrast to the hot tears that had started to streak down her cheeks. God, the fucking tears again. Every tear she shed about Arthas was a tear too many. Yet there she was, doing it again.

Sylvanas nodded as she took another sip. “Do you like documentaries?”

“What kind of question is that?” Jaina asked.

“You’re right. I should have started with this one; do you have Netflix?” Sylvanas questioned again, still standing there in just her boy shorts and cami.

“I...do,” Jaina answered.

“Okay then, do you want to watch some boring nature documentaries with me instead, Jaina? Because as much as you are very stunning and as much as I would like to continue what we were doing, I would rather you be comfortable. And I would rather you not be alone tonight, because it seems like you shouldn’t be,” Sylvanas told her.

After a bit of fumbling with the remote for her new TV, the one in the bedroom, Sylvanas had managed to put on Planet Earth. She was settling back against the headboard with the sound of David Attenborough talking about some sort of monkey as their soundtrack. She was also as far away from Jaina as she could manage to be, while still laying on the bed with her.

And for some reason, that too, was intolerable. 

“You can still touch me, you know,” Jaina offered, but didn’t dare to move from her side of the bed.

“Are you asking me to?” Sylvanas questioned. Fuck. When would she run out of questions?

No. Jaina didn’t want her to. Not yet.

“Yes,” she answered. “I liked when you were touching me before. At the bar. With your arm around me. We can do that again, if you’re okay with it.”

“I’m very okay with it,” Sylvanas said as she crept across the sheets to join her. 

Sylvanas’ arms were warm, still, but not fire hot anymore. She pulled the comforter over their bare legs. After a segment on the migration of caribou, she even hazarded a light touch across Jaina’s forearm, just stroking idly over it. 

“Why are you doing this?” Jaina asked in a near whisper when the camera started to pan across a rainforest canopy.

“Do you know about the rate at which skin cells are shed and replaced?” Sylvanas asked her instead of answering, not turning her eyes away from the screen. 

“What kind of question is that?” Jaina wondered.

“Every month, the entire top layer of your skin is replaced with completely new cells. The dead ones fall off,” Sylvanas informed her.

“That’s kind of gross,” Jaina said. 

Her hip was starting to get a little numb, so she shifted and ended up leaning back further into Sylvanas. She didn’t mind that, though. Sylvanas didn’t seem to either. She didn’t smell like whiskey anymore. Just shampoo. A little deodorant maybe. And a distinct person smell, very much not like the one Jaina found herself missing on nights like these.

Very different, indeed.

“No, it’s wonderful,” Sylvanas countered. “Think about it.”

“I’m thinking about how much of my dead skin is probably all over this place. Still gross,” Jaina told her.

“I’m thinking that just a month after you left him, no part of your skin will be left that touched him,” Sylvanas said.

So full of questions, yet when she finally had a statement to make, it was such a good one. So much that Jaina couldn’t think of anything to say to it. This woman didn’t know that her skin had been replaced twelve times over since Arthas. She didn’t need to know. She didn’t seem to care if she did or did not know. But she was still here. She was still holding Jaina in a way he never had, with her chin resting on her shoulder, speaking truths against her neck. 

She didn’t know how much her still mildly disgusting fact mattered to Jaina, just then.

They watched another episode of Planet Earth. And another. And another. They went back to answering questions with questions, but only sometimes. Most of the time, they just sat in Jaina’s bed and were still together. At least, until the sun started to shine in through the blinds. 

“Shit,” Sylvanas finally said, interrupting a segment about lion prides. She looked at her watch, which they hadn’t managed to remove in the night’s more rigorous activities. “I have to go.”

“That’s okay,” Jaina told her, even as she leaned a little further back into her arms. “Thank you. For staying. For being exactly what I didn’t know I needed.”

“I’m sorry. I’d stay longer, but I have an early class to teach.”

“A...class?”

Jaina had been so sure she wasn’t a professor. So damn sure. The name, for one, wasn’t one she’d seen or heard yet. And she was wearing jeans. And sure, she was smart and all, very smart, but there was no way.

Sylvanas slipped out from behind her and toward the other side of the bed to root around for her clothes. “Biology 305, Decay and the Carbon Cycle,” she proudly announced. “My specialty and my favorite class, despite the fact that it’s at 8am.”

Fuck. She was a professor all right. A biology professor. Well, that explained the nature docs then, didn’t it?

Jaina just sat in stunned silence for a moment, trying not to be mortified that she had dismissed the thought that she could have been very well trying, unsuccessfully, to seduce a colleague. Of course she was. Of course she had. Why would anyone else in this town with a brain be anything but a professor?

Sylvanas pulled her phone out of her pants when they were back on her. It had somehow never left the front pocket until that moment. 

“But I think I still have time to get your number, Professor Proudmoore,” she said as she unlocked it.

“Why on earth would you want that?” Jaina asked. 

“Because we’re not done with this series yet,” Sylvanas answered. “And because I wouldn’t mind just sitting here and holding you and watching it some more. Honestly.”

“Why?” Jaina wondered.

“Why not?” Sylvanas asked back.

Enough was enough. “Can you just, actually answer that one question for me? Please?” 

Sylvanas smiled. She actually smiled. A smile like the dawn shining in through the window. Like the familiar scent of corner store coffee that was already wafting up from downstairs, warm and rich and just everything. “Because I like you, Jaina. I like how you and I talk. And I don’t need to touch you anywhere you don’t want to be touched to explore that. I don’t want you to shed me off your skin just yet. But if you just want me to go away, I can.”

“I don’t,” Jaina answered immediately. 

So Sylvanas handed her the phone. She typed in her contact, only struggling a little to remember her latest burner number, and hoping that Sylvanas would text her before she had to change it again so she could write her number down.

Not that Arthas had tried to find her. Not for a while. She was pretty sure he didn’t even know she’d gone to Dalaran. Hopefully he wasn’t trying to find out. Maybe she could stop changing numbers. Maybe she could stop doing...all of this. 

But Sylvanas was certainly making her want to try a little harder.

“I’ll see you on campus then, Professor Proudmoore?”

“I suppose you will, Professor Windrunner.”


	2. Lydian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fucking love this AU. Why did I stop writing it?
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy me remembering it existed and writing 8.5k in a day.

This would be the second time they've met for coffee. Not that anyone was counting. But Jaina was.

The first time they met, Jaina expected Sylvanas to order some sort of fancy drink that took too many steps to make. Instead, she just took the house roast black, and added her own sugar.

This second time around, she was just getting back to their table from doing the exact same thing, and putting Jaina's caramel macchiato to over-indulgent shame at that.

But, as before, Sylvanas never acted that way. She didn't scoff at beverage choices or even at the books Jaina carried with her, the ones that always managed to spill out of her messenger bag and onto the table between them. She always seemed to take the time to read their titles, but never said anything about them. A bit of undue online sleuthing had told Jaina that Sylvanas had every right to turn her nose up at whatever she wanted to. She was a senior professor in the Life Sciences department, with not one, but two doctorates. Biology and Philosophy. Of course Philosophy. Both earned from Dalaran, a respected institution, and her undergrad at Silvermoon, an ancient school with plenty of its own accolades, and certainly not the notorious party school that Jaina had earned her degrees at.

But, you wouldn't know it from looking at her. Even now, she was as dressed down as she could be--khakis rolled at the ankles, revealing comfortable-looking loafers, and a plain button up with the sleeves rolled up over her elbows. That watch again, with its broad, dark leather band. Her hair was up again, but contained in a ponytail today. Jaina hadn't realized how long it was until she was sitting there, cursing herself for not being able to even get it out of the bun that night. She imagined it would be very soft and nice to run her fingers through.

"So, what's on your mind today?" Sylvanas asked as she sat down with her coffee.

Being that how much she wished she had just been able to fuck her like a normal person, or that she couldn't stop thinking about what would have happened if she could, wasn't the best answer, Jaina said instead, "Coffee shop ownership. It has to be easier than teaching, right?"

"How so?" Sylvanas pried, crossing her legs and taking a sip from her cup.

More questions. She hadn't run out of them yet.

"I wouldn't have to do much. Learning how to use the machines would be the hardest part, I imagine. But I could just order the pastries from a bakery. Hire students to do most of the work. See interesting people bustling in and out throughout the day, or lingering for awkward coffee dates. It wouldn't be a bad life," Jaina mused as she watched the frenzy around the front counter of the shop.

"I more meant how has teaching become a seemingly more difficult line of work for you?" Sylvanas asked.

“It’s not that,” Jaina responded. But it was. “I used to be very passionate about literature. I loved books. Always have loved them. I thought that sharing that passion with others and talking about the things that meant a lot to me was what I wanted to do with my life. Then I taught for five years where no one really gave a shit. The students were just there to check off a requirement. Their papers were half-stolen, or at least as much as the plagiarism protections we had there would let them get away with, which was a lot.”

“I would have thought that to be less of a problem here for you,” Sylvanas said with a note of genuine concern.

Whether that was for Jaina or for the idea of academic dishonesty, Jaina wasn’t entirely sure. Not yet, at least. She didn’t know her well enough for that yet. “It’s not. But I feel like a fraud now. That passion isn’t there for me. It died lingering on in Lordaeron, perhaps the third time I had to pass a football player with the reading comprehension of a seven-year-old. The kids here deserve better than that. I don’t know if I have it left in me to give.”

“Says a woman who still loves her books,” Sylvanas noted as she nudged one of those that had slipped out of Jaina’s satchel on the table between them. A book of comedic short stories by one of Jaina’s favorite light reading authors. 

Well, that wasn’t untrue. Of all the things that Jaina had changed about herself, willingly and unwillingly, over the course of her life, the books had remained. Arthas would berate her endlessly for the amount of money she spent on them. He’d complain about tripping over them and all the space they would take up on the coffee table. 

But Jaina had kept her books. In her office. At work. Away from him.

If only she’d had as much sense about herself. 

Jaina shook the thought from her mind. Her new therapist had told her she needed to stop blaming herself for everything. If only such things were as easily done as they were said. But she was trying. She was honestly trying this time.

Her motivations for that, though, were still perhaps not the healthiest. Jaina caught herself even then, tracing the outlines of Sylvanas’ forearms up her rolled sleeves. Her arms were very nice. Very attractive. Everything about the woman was still wildly attractive. 

And yet their encounters since that first one had been entirely chaste. 

“You have the passion still,” Sylvanas told her. “You just need practice having a captive audience.”

“Like the kids here at one of the best universities in the world are going to stand for practice,” Jaina sighed. “I still have no idea why they hired me, honestly.”

“They had to have seen something in you, that’s why,” Sylvanas said. She reached for another book that only had one, well-loved corner showing from the bag and pulled it out, holding it up without looking at it. “Here, you can practice on me even. Lecture me about this one.”

This one was more light reading. Light reading that honestly should have been left in her apartment. When Jaina flushed and didn’t respond otherwise, Sylvanas flipped the book around to find the cover art staring her in the face. A board-chested human man with dark, curly hair was shirtless and glistening as he wrapped a Night Elf woman in an over-muscled, but decidedly steamy embrace. Well, he wasn’t entirely shirtless. The remains of a torn red flannel were draped about his waist. The title itself was the most damning thing--Steamy Romance Novels Presents: The Lumberjack and the Activist, a Tale of Forbidden Love.

“Your tastes are certainly broad,” Sylvanas said with a smirk, before setting the book back down again and tucking it gently back into the satchel.

“I’d espouse the deeper meanings of grocery store bodice rippers to you if you really wanted me to, but the truth is that we all like a little trash now and then,” Jaina said as she made an attempt to recover herself and what little dignity she had left. “I have two William Faulkner novels and a book about archeological ethics in there too, if you can believe it.”

“I can,” Sylvanas assured her. “You’re right, though. Sometimes I watch reality TV. We all need our trash.”

“So you are one of us mere mortals after all,” Jaina alighted, taking a sip of her macchiato. It was sweet and altogether too much, but just what she wanted. 

She was allowed to have the things she wanted. This hadn’t come from any therapist, old or new. No, that resolve had only come from Jaina herself. It was hard-earned and fought for, clawed from the depths of a younger self that knew how to live independently and freely. She was allowed her trashy books. She could litter them over any surface she wanted. She was allowed to make whatever sugary and indulgent beverage choices she wanted to. 

She was allowed to make her own choices.

“Do you have any plans tonight?” Jaina asked.

It was a Friday, after all. In Lordaeron, she would have either been at the game or at the bar watching other games. There would be no question as to what her Friday nights would have consisted of. But now. Now she could choose.

“Unless watching said reality TV while I grade papers counts as plans, then no,” Sylvanas answered.

She cocked one long eyebrow up, wary. If that was one thing Jaina didn’t love about her, it was that wariness. Sylvanas seemed to think herself the only thing standing between Jaina and another bad decision. Perhaps that’s why she’d continued to see her, despite everything. Perhaps that’s why she answered late night texts and emailed her seemingly random articles. Pity was a great motivator, after all.

Just not one Jaina wanted for herself. 

“Are you a Real Housewives girl? Or 90 Day Fiance?” Jaina pried, trying not to think too much about her companion’s motivations.

“Neither. I like the one where they build the fish tanks,” Sylvanas admitted freely. 

“It’s so fake.”

“I know.”

Jaina found herself looking over the rim of her macchiato. Or rather, over the top of the white plastic lid that contained the sweet drink. Sylvanas stared back at her, eyebrow still askew, sharp, steel-grey eyes questioning. 

“What I’m trying to say is that I’d very much like to order a pizza and don’t want an excuse to eat the whole thing by myself. Do you want to put aside the trash TV and learn about monkeys with me instead while eating the other half of my pizza? Perhaps the migratory patterns of storks? I forgot where we left off,” Jaina offered.

She saw the hesitation. She watched Sylvanas think about it. Sylvanas was always so quick to respond, so the beat or two of silence before she did was deafening.

“I have a lab today, doesn’t get out until late. Would somewhere around eight be okay?”

That was not the answer Jaina was expecting. She was expecting to be told no. To be told this was a terrible idea. To be asked if she was going to try to do something she couldn’t follow through with again.

Which honestly, was exactly her plan.

“That’s fine with me,” Jaina replied, trying not to let her confusion show. “Did you need my address?”

“You live a block from my favorite bar and above my second favorite convenience store. I think I can find my way again,” Sylvanas told her.

“Only second favorite?” 

“They don’t have the good cheese popcorn,” Sylvanas explained.

“You’re completely ruining my image of you as this posh learned person today, you know,” Jaina said. “You like cheese popcorn and watch reality TV? Yet you lecture me on philosophy like it’s your job, while your actual job is to lecture on a completely different subject.”

“Good philosophy is a conversation, not a lecture. Even Socrates would agree. And I can have my vices and my virtues like anyone else. Speaking of vices, what’s your preferred pizza drink that I can pick up at your convenience store on my way? Don’t tell me straight vodka with ice, please,” Sylvanas pleaded. “And don’t tell me that’s still the only thing in your fridge.”

“I have orange juice and coffee creamer now, thank you,” Jaina informed her. “But neither go with pizza. Beer or any soda I’d say.”

“Beer it is,” Sylvanas noted.

“See? Completely ruined. She likes beer and pizza now? What happened to cheese plates and Manhattans?”

Sylvanas just smiled and shook her head to this. “Wait until you see what kind of snobby beer I show up with before you make that judgement.”

\---

Sylvanas did indeed show up with a snobby beer. She set an IPA from a local brewery down on Jaina’s counter, but also another six pack of a more well-known amber ale. 

She’d shown up in the same outfit as before, but now with a leather jacket she was shedding by the door. Jaina had never questioned herself, but also been more pleased with herself, than she was as she watched Sylvanas search for a place to hang it.

Jaina herself hadn’t changed either, even though she’d been home for hours now. Her only options at this point were the clothes she wore to class and trash pajamas. She had decided that a few hours of discomfort were better than starting her date in an oversized t-shirt and gym shorts. Well, if this could be called a date.

“You can just toss it over the couch or something. Sorry,” Jaina said as she gestured to her still barebones living room.

She’d tried to make some changes in the last three weeks. Tried being the key word. Jaina decided that she hated the white walls. She hated the beige carpet and grey kitchen. Everything screamed of bland and generic in this place. She wanted to change it, wanted to make it her own.

But then, when she tried to do just that, she didn’t really know what she wanted to change. She didn’t have any favorite art to hang up. She didn’t have a style or a type of furniture she desperately wanted to fill that emptiness with. She only had the sense of a void of those things within herself. A void of wanting, and a wanting for someone else to do the work of filling it.

Before, everything had been for Arthas. What he wanted to do. How he wanted things to look. Her other apartments had been awash with color in the form of team banners and signed jerseys and flags, among other things.

But Jaina had decided that she just...really fucking hated football.

After another long conversation with her therapist about it, she’d managed to buy a bookshelf. Assembling it had been another task, but one she struggled through physically, and not really mentally. Maybe a little. So no, the walls were still white and bare. The furniture was basic. The dishes she was setting out were still of the paper and plastic variety only. But, at least her books were off the floor. 

“It’s looking nice in here,” Sylvanas acknowledged as she hung her jacket over the back of the couch without any further questioning.

Jaina surveyed her home again. Fine. It was more than a bookshelf. There was a blanket on the couch now. A Dalaran University coffee mug forgotten on an end table, one of the few permanent dishes she had. Another awful bodice-ripper paperback, right where she’d left it on the TV console. Little things that didn’t go on walls or come in ten thousand pieces from big boxes with indecipherable assembly instructions. Little things that made this place look like someone did, in fact, live here.

It was getting there. So was she. 

“Thanks,” Jaina said simply.

She opened their beers with a quarter, because she didn’t have a church key. Sylvanas merely remarked that it was a neat trick and didn’t ask where it had come from or how or why. Jaina didn’t volunteer the information either. That was another thing that she was learning. She didn’t have to explain herself all the time. Especially not to Sylvanas.

Sylvanas certainly didn’t need to hear about her frat party days, anyway.

The pizza came, and the delivery boy was heartily tipped. One extra large pizza, half pepperoni, half veggie-lovers. 

“I should have asked if you were vegan or something like that,” Jaina noted. “But wait, you wouldn’t eat cheese then, would you?”

Sylvanas stared at her for a moment, mouth full of cheese. She finished chewing her first bite and swallowed. “No, I wouldn’t. And I’m not. I just like veggies.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Jaina sighed as she took a bite of her own first slice, and washed it down with the amber.

They were seated on her couch now. Dress shoes kicked off, but otherwise far too formally dressed to be eating pizza off paper plates and drinking beer from bottles. Jaina wasn’t complaining. Neither was Sylvanas. 

Even with her IPA and veggie pizza. 

“Why?”

“Have you ever had vegan cheese?”

“It’s foul,” Sylvanas said with a shuddering nod. “But I’m also thankful that we’re not getting into any sort of ethical debates about animal products. That and non-cheese are two things I attempt to avoid.”

“Out of discomfort with them, or the people that bring them up?” Jaina asked.

She was getting better at being the one to continue the question train. Sylvanas was getting better at giving straight answers. Still, their conversations never seemed to really find an end. It was nice. Talking like this. She’d never been able to have someone keep up with her. Or rather, she’d never had someone around who was interested in trying to.

“Both. I like meat. I like dairy. I have the teeth of a predator. I dislike arguing about the impact of my preferences on the global industrial complex with people who wouldn’t so much as dream about getting their hands dirty enough to grow a tomato in a pot on their patio,” Sylvanas offered.

“That’s very specific,” Jaina pointed out.

“And yet, I could name at least five people whom I’ve met in the last year who fit the profile,” Sylvanas sighed. “This is good pizza, by the way. Where is it from again?”

“The first place that stuck a flyer into my mailbox. Mario’s, I think?” Jaina wondered. She hadn’t bothered to keep said flyer. She just put the number into her phone and called the contact “Pizza”.

Sylvanas hummed an acknowledgement into a bite of her second slice.

At some point, the TV was flipped on, and their nature documentary along with it. They talked over most of it this time, sadly not absorbing many facts about the cyclical nature of life in the Nile delta, or whatever it was the narrator droned on about. Jaina surmised that Sylvanas knew all of this by heart, anyway. Whenever she had prodded her on her speciality, she had received a thorough, but not overly-complex answer to any biology question she could have thrown at her.

Sylvanas clearly knew her shit. That was exactly why Jaina liked her. In these three weeks since their first encounter, she had yet to find anything fake about her. Everything Sylvanas said was what she truly thought. Anything she did not say, well, she had her reasons. Jaina was sure of that.

Reasons a plenty that floated somewhere beyond those cool grey eyes. 

Jaina got up to stash the leftovers away, which were very few in number. They’d done a pretty good job for just two people and a very large pizza. And actually, almost every piece that was still left was decidedly of the pepperoni variety. She put the mostly empty box into her mostly empty fridge. She took out another beer for herself, then glanced at the remaining colorful bottles of IPA. 

“Do you want another beer?” Jaina asked.

“If you’re offering to open another one for me, sure,” Sylvanas called back.

It felt...nice to ask. To get a response. To not have it be an expectation. God. These were such stupid things she thought of. So fucking stupid. So horrible that she felt good because she wasn’t expected to bring anyone a beer. Dumb as hell that she felt proud of herself for asking, instead of just doing it.

No. She wasn’t doing this today. She’d promised herself. Today was going to be different. So far, so good.

But, this was really nice. It was nice not to have the apartment be filled with stark quiet to the point that Jaina listened for other things. So quiet that she could hear the clerk downstairs coughing, or the buzz of her dormant electronics. It was nice to just have the space filled. But, you know, the person filling it wasn’t half bad either.

Neither was the fact that Sylvanas didn’t question her when Jaina sat next to her and leaned into her as she handed over the bottle of beer. 

Still, Jaina asked. “We can do the cuddling thing again, right?”

“We can,” Sylvanas said with a little smile, shifting the beer into her other hand as she wrapped the other arm around Jaina.

The TV screen now was an array of colors. Jaina watched as the documentary showed wild parrots flocking over a rainforest canopy. It was beautiful.

So much so that even Sylvanas seemed enraptured for a moment or two as they settled into one another. 

Jaina took a sip of her own beer, then another, mulling over her thoughts as the fizzing taste of malted grain mulled over hers. She’d tried a bit of the first bottle of Sylvanas’ IPA. It was too hoppy for her. She was glad for the generic instead. 

Maybe she’d like different things, though. Porters and stouts, like her hometown was famous for. Could she build her identity from that? Books and dark beer? Many people were made of simpler things.

But no. Jaina wanted more from herself. She wanted to be something like Sylvanas--outward confidence and quirkiness, hiding deep mysteries that had to be pried out one by one, like artifacts cemented into ancient earth.

She dared to slide a hand down onto Sylvanas’ thigh. It was muscled and solid beneath her pants, just as Jaina had remembered it being. 

“Do you work out or something?” she asked.

“I hike. I ride a motorcycle, though not as much as I used to,” Sylvanas explained. “I feel like it’s a duty of anyone who studies biology to be a hiker, though. The best way to understand nature is to, you know, be in it.”

“Makes sense,” Jaina concurred. 

She was not a hiker. She was not a camper. Arthas liked camping, but of the sitting around and drinking beer variety. She didn’t mind that, obviously. She just preferred to do it inside.

Inside, quitely, touching a woman’s thigh a little more than she had any business doing, all things considered. Yes, that was a much better way to drink beer.

Jaina saw her expression change. Even though she was pretending to still watch the parrots, she watched out of the corner of her eye as Sylvanas’ ears quirked up, then back down. Elves. So damn easy to read. Her long brows bent into concern.

“Jaina,” Sylvanas started, but did not finish. She just watched as that hand traveled further up her thigh.

“Do you do field work then?” Jaina asked, ignoring what might have been a warning.

“Not as much as I’d like to,” Sylvanas answered, turning now to search Jaina’s face for the answer she wasn’t giving.

Jaina slid her hand further up, and inward, ghosting toward the inner seam of Sylvanas’ khakis. “Would you mind helping me conduct an experiment then?”

“I’m not certain this is the best of ideas,” Sylvanas told her.

Jaina wasn’t either. “Hence why it’s an experiment. If anyone feels uncomfortable, we stop. You or me.”

“And what is the hypothesis we’re trying to prove with our experiment then?” Sylvanas asked even as she dipped her head down towards Jaina’s, waiting for her to come up the rest of the way.

“That I find you insanely attractive enough to forget my hang ups. That as much as I’ve enjoyed this trial run at platonic friendship, I’m still very interested in adding the ‘with benefits’ part back into the mix,” Jaina told her. 

“Only if you can be honest with yourself about it. Please do that much for me,” Sylvanas breathed against her. The hoppy beer on her breath smelled like grapefruit. 

Jaina decided it would probably taste better from her than it did from the bottle. “I will. I promise.”

She leaned up and kissed her. Sylvanas’ lips were soft. The beer did taste much better on them than it had otherwise, but mostly Jaina could just taste her. As she deepened the kiss, that didn’t change. Nor did the feeling in her gut. It was just light flutters of excitement and attraction. A little nervousness, but now subsiding into warmth. 

Especially so when Sylvanas broke the kiss, laid one finger to her lips when Jaina protested, and set both of their beer bottles down on the coffee table. She didn’t try to stop it. She was just freeing up her hands.

“Not exactly what I thought you had in mind for the evening, but I don’t mind,” she mouthed against Jaina’s neck as one beer-cooled hand ghosted up her arm before resting on her hip and kneading there as Sylvanas peppered light kisses across her jaw.

“I’ll do you one better and be honest with you too. It was exactly what I’ve had in mind since we had coffee this morning,” Jaina told her, eyes fluttering when Sylvanas found a particularly sensitive spot just below her ear.

Sylvanas only hummed an acknowledgement of that before she kissed her again. Gently, but still with her mouth open and her tongue in play. Testing. Exploring. Savoring, even.

“Well, I’m interested in whatever ‘benefits’ you want to explore,” Sylvanas whispered as she pulled away again.

They kept it to that for a while. Deep, lingering kisses, followed by questing explorations. Not unlike hiking out in the field. Jaina mapped out the geography of Sylvanas’ face and neck and chest. She navigated her fickle ears, which flicked away at too much stimulation, but also caused Sylvanas’ breath to hitch at even the slightest touch along their long, delicate lines. She studied the denizens of her mouth, teeth and tongue alike. She could write in a peer-reviewed journal about those lips, even, and how good they felt.

And it was still okay. It was still fine. Everything about this was still good. The best and the worst of it. The heat and slickness building between her legs and the slight hint of garlic still unfortunately present on both of their breath. Oh well. It was good. It was real. It was as normal a thing as beer and pizza on Friday nights, something that Jaina could still have, but on her own terms.

“This experiment is so far going very well,” Jaina declared from her new position on Sylvanas’ lap. She’d been pulled there, well, not exactly. Guided might be the better word.

She liked being guided, rather than being pulled. Pulled could still be a word for the future, though.

“Mmm, glad to hear it,” Sylvanas said as she leaned up to capture Jaina’s lips again.

This time, Jaina was the one to pull back. To look into those steel eyes gone soft and heavy-lidded for her. Sylvanas was obviously very into this. As patient and kind as she had been, she still very much wanted her. That was as plain as day, or at least as plain as her flushed face and dazed look made it seem. Yet, she was just as content to sit there and look up at Jaina. She didn’t force anything. She paid attention to every twitch of Jaina’s hips, every searching look she sent her way.

Jaina cupped the elf’s face, running a thumb down from just beneath her eye to her lips, lingering there where it pressed against a long canine under the soft skin. “Can we go to my bedroom again?” Jaina asked.

Sylvanas gave her answer simply by taking Jaina’s hand and helping her off of her lap.

Jaina turned to ask one question as she slipped past the doorway and into the darkened room. The nightlight was gone. It had been for a week now.

“Not going to caution me again?”

“You’re a big girl. You can make your own decisions,” Sylvanas told her, squeezing the hand she still held. “Just know that I’ll stand by them.”

“Not sure what I did to deserve you,” Jaina muttered.

“Nothing, but you didn’t need to deserve me, or anyone who listens to you. You don’t need to do anything for that. It’s what you should have,” Sylvanas said. She pulled her toward the bed and waited for Jaina to sit.

And so, Jaina sat. “Isn’t that what deserving is?”

“No. Idealism, maybe,” Sylvanas answered. “More philosophy for you again.”

“I like your philosophy,” Jaina told her. She drew her in, letting go of her hand to bring Sylvanas in by the backs of her thighs. Strong and hard and warm beneath the fabric, but slender and soft too. 

“I’m beginning to think you like many things about me, Professor Proudmoore,” Sylvanas said, not questioning the way Jaina’s hands roamed over her. Not anymore.

That name hadn’t stopped. Sylvanas apparently liked it too much. As brilliant and as kind as she was, her sense of humor was terribly corny at times.

And Jaina didn’t mind. Professor Proudmoore had always been something she was loath to give up. Even in that brief few months where she was planning to have it become Professor Menethil.

Thank whatever deity was listening she didn’t do that.

“I do,” Jaina confessed. “I like your hiking thighs. I like how you talk to me. I like how you listen to me. I like that you’re not above beer and pizza and putting your feet up on my coffee table.”

“And I like your books. I like how you smile when you don’t think I’m watching. I like you very, very much,” Sylvanas followed suit.

Jaina might have hidden that same smile into her hip and she placed a kiss there, just below the thick leather band of Sylvanas’ belt. She brought her hands forward, sinking a thumb beneath the offending leather from above and tracing along a sharp hip bone. 

“I’m not going to ruin that, am I?” Jaina wondered, mostly to herself, but let the words slip.

“No,” Sylvanas said simply. “You aren’t.”

She knelt down to meet her in another gentle kiss. It grew hotter and heavier and wetter as Sylvanas climbed into bed with Jaina, hovering over her, but not straddling her. Deliberate and careful, but not holding back otherwise. 

But it was wonderful. Warm and solid and affectionate. Better than a stranger, but less than a commitment. Maybe this was what she needed. Maybe this time, it would be enough.

Jaina might just explode if it wasn’t, so that was another motivator. Certainly. 

So confidence and commitment to the action surged as she slipped her hands beneath Sylvanas’ shirt and scratched at the camisole she found there. Again? Maybe she just liked the softness against her skin. Better than itchy sweaters and dress shirts. Jaina didn’t dwell on it. She started to undo those buttons from the bottom up.

Sylvanas let out a little laugh at this. A sound that Jaina didn’t know how to interpret at first. It wasn’t mocking. It wasn’t in response to anything at all. It was just…

People laughed like this during sex, didn’t they? It was what they were supposed to do. It was supposed to feel free and easy and fun. And yes. It did. 

Enough that Jaina laughed too and left Sylvanas’ shirt on her, unbuttoned and hanging loose against her sides. The camisole beneath was black today, and had a lacy little fringe at the top. A little feminine under her otherwise rather androgynous attire. A touch that Jaina found incredibly delightful and attractive, and questioned if it was maybe done on purpose.

So much so that she swung Sylvanas’ leg over her and pressed down on the small of her back until the elf was flush with her. Until that shirt was brushing across her sides too. Until they were kissing again. Until she didn’t even realize she had someone on top of her. Or at least, not in the way that she’d been so aware of all the times before.

Until Sylvanas pulled away, one palm flat on the sheets next to Jaina, another hand toying with the edge of her blouse, asking a question she was otherwise too breathless to voice.

“Yeah,” was all Jaina got out for an answer. 

And then that blouse was being tugged over her head, up her arms, and tossed aside. Sylvanas would get to see that they matched. The only thing Jaina had bothered to change when she got home before were her underwear choices. But maybe she could let her fellow professor assume that she just wore a lacy black bra for fun. You know, on totally normal occasions when she wasn’t even trying to seduce anyone.

And from the look of her, Sylvanas approved regardless. “Have I mentioned that you’re exquisite?” she asked as she leaned up a little more, pressing her hips into Jaina as she did so in a way that made both of them squirm, just a little.

“I think you did last time you took my shirt off,” Jaina said, laughing again. It felt good to laugh like this. So good.

“Well, pardon my limited vocabulary then. I’ll think of a better word next time,” Sylvanas offered as she leaned in to kiss across the lines of Jaina’s collar bones.

“You could try something terrible like voluptuous. Maybe buxom, or--ah!” Jaina’s dictionary of romance novel language was interrupted as Sylvanas sucked against a particularly tender patch of skin, no doubt leaving a little mark in her wake, and causing Jaina to hiss.

“Mmm, perhaps no words are better, if those are your alternatives,” Sylvanas whispered as she slid those kisses between Jaina’s breasts, biting briefly at the little satin bow on the front of her bra. 

“You can take it off,” Jaina sighed out as she felt her hips roll into Sylvanas of their own accord. She’d meant to have that come out as some sort of witty retort, but bit it back. No. She didn’t have time for that. She wanted so badly to have this woman touch her. Not just touch her, but to touch her.

“Then I shall run completely out of words,” Sylvanas threatened. Her hands started to slip around behind Jaina all the same, urging her to sit up.

“As much as I love to hear you talk, I promise I won’t mind,” Jaina told her. She tried to include a lot of other things with that promise. A promise that she wouldn’t freak out. That she wouldn’t stop it this time. That she wouldn’t ruin everything.

Promises she couldn’t really make. Things she couldn’t guarantee. But she wanted to. God, did she want to.

But she didn’t freak out. She didn’t roll away. She sighed with relief as Sylvanas unlatched the clasp of her bra and helped her slide it off. She moaned as warm, soft hands brushed reverently at the skin they’d just revealed. Not a hungry, desperate palming. No, this was worship. Slow, delicate worship. Fingers tracing curves. Thumbs measuring circumference. The edge of a nail circling a nipple, not quite daring to brush across it just yet.

And then, Sylvanas leaning down to kiss her again. The soft silk of her camisole brushing up against bare skin. The softer silk of her lips capturing Jaina’s again and again in rapid succession. 

No more words. Not now. 

Somewhere in that kiss, she’d flung her dress shirt aside. Somewhere in there, Jaina fumbled with the buckle of Sylvanas’ belt, then the button and zipper of her fly. The pants were tugged off, along with another pair of boy shorts that had gone with them. They were opposites now. Sylvanas bare on the bottom, Jaina on the top. Jaina’s fingers now tracing over the curve of her ass, trying to show as much delicacy and care as Sylvanas had shown her chest.

The hitches in her breath were enough to say that Jaina was doing a pretty good job of it. A hiss as she dipped below that swell told her that Sylvanas was enjoying this bareness as much as she was too.

“Not yet,” the elf breathed into her ear. “You first. Then I will be very, very ready for you. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jaina answered. 

It was okay as Sylvanas tugged at the waistband of her slacks. It was fine as she unhooked and unzipped them. It was still good as she slid them down Jaina’s legs, kissing just above each knee, going slow. It was questionable when she came back up those bare legs.

And then it wasn’t okay anymore when Sylvanas started to pull down her panties.

“Stop,” Jaina croaked out. Angry with herself. So fucking angry.

Sylvanas stopped immediately. She didn’t roll off Jaina. She didn’t back away as if burnt this time. She sat up slowly, swinging one leg over her to give her space, but staying next to her.

In fact, she laid back down next to her. Immediately. 

“Talk to me,” Sylvanas said. Even. Calm. Still breathless, but trying not to be. “Try to talk to me.”

Jaina bit back a sob she didn’t want to let out. A sob she wasn’t willing to acknowledge. Just saying that word had been hard enough. “I just…”

“Try,” Sylvanas pleaded. She was leaning up on one elbow, looking down at Jaina from a few inches higher. Just high enough to give her a good angle to push a stray lock of hair out of Jaina’s eyes.

“I don’t know what it is. I was fine until just then,” Jaina said. “I mean, you were here. You hopefully felt the same.”

“I did,” Sylvanas told her. She pressed a quick kiss to Jaina’s now hair-free forehead before asking, “Is it just too much for me to touch you below the waist then?”

Maybe? It had been fine until then, after all. “I guess?” Jaina answered. “I was...really liking how you touched the rest of me. I don’t know. Maybe being totally naked too? I’m not sure. I’m trying, though. I really, really want you to touch me everywhere.”

“I wouldn’t mind touching you anywhere,” Sylvanas assured her, “but I would mind if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“That’s why I told you to stop,” Jaina said.

“And you did wonderfully,” Sylvanas told her, thumbing her cheek and smiling a very genuine smile.

“I did a wonderful job of getting you worked up for nothing again,” Jaina sighed in defeat. She looked away from Sylvanas to stare up at the ceiling, finding herself missing the weight and heat of her above her.

“Well, let’s think it through, shall we?” Sylvanas offered from beside her. She ran a hand through the soft hair at Jaina’s temple, toying with her flyaways.

“What do you mean?” Jaina asked as she turned back to her.

“We’re doctors of science. Well, I am at least, but I know you know more than enough to follow along. What do good scientists do, when they get different results than they expected during their experiment?”

“Confirm that their hypothesis was wrong, then write a paper crying about it and publish it anyway,” Jaina answered with a scoff.

“I said good scientists, Jaina. Not pompous assholes,” Sylvanas said with another grin. “Good scientists run another experiment to confirm the unexpected data wasn’t just an anomaly. To see if, perhaps, their same hypothesis can be proven correct, but perhaps just requires different testing methodologies.”

Jaina flipped onto her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows to be at a height with Sylvanas. She delivered a quick, curious kiss as she asked, “And what does the good Doctor Windrunner suggest for those methodologies?”

“That, despite popular belief, us having sex doesn’t necessarily have to involve me touching you below the waist. Or even if you taking your panties off,” Sylvanas suggested with a peck of her own.

“Oh? Care to elaborate further?” Jaina prodded.

“I’d be just as thrilled to watch you get yourself off. Or, if that proves too much, I can go in the other room until you’re finished. Then, and only then, we can talk about what I might do about myself,” Sylvanas offered, daring to run just the lightest of touches down Jaina’s spine as she proposed her idea.

“I…”

Jaina hadn’t even been able to reliably get herself off. Honestly. It was all such a struggle for her. Hence the frustration. Hence the continuing attempt to drag strangers into her problem to fix it for her. But, those strangers rarely made her this wet. They never were this understanding. They’d never stuck around long enough to even offer an alternative. 

“I really want that,” Jaina answered. “Can I try?”

“I want nothing more than for you to do just that. You don’t mind me watching?” Sylvanas asked in turn.

“I think I need you watching,” Jaina told her. 

“How?”

They answered the question with a kiss. A kiss that turned into a guiding of hips and shoulders. Of teeth and tongues and the press of Sylvanas’ back against the headboard. Of Jaina catching a glimpse of her legs spread in the moonlight, and wanting very much to change her mind and offer to get her off first. But no, she was pretty sure Sylvanas was going to insist on this. And she was pretty sure she might die from want before she could even get her there.

Especially with the way Sylvanas licked her lips as Jaina settled back from her, just out of range of any touching at all, on her knees, propped just far enough off the bed that she could slip a hand beneath the waistband of her panties.

And so she did.

“Keep talking to me,” Sylvanas said. Her bare legs were sprawled to one side, and her hips flexed just so, just enough to tell Jaina that she was very much enjoying the start of the show. “Tell me if you want me to go. Tell me anything.”

“Mmm, stay,” Jaina sighed as she touched gently along the outer edge of herself. 

“How wet are you?” Sylvanas asked.

Jaina wanted so badly to look at her, but as she dipped a finger deeper to answer that question, it was getting very hard to keep her eyes open. “Soaked,” she answered.

“I thought I felt that,” Sylvanas told her. “What do you like? When you touch yourself?”

“Mmm,” Jaina stalled. She was finding it hard to think, as she captured said wetness and slicked it further against herself. “Depends. Sometimes I like to take my time. Sometimes I just wanna get off.”

“What about tonight?” Sylvanas asked her.

Tonight? Tonight, she didn’t want to think about anything else. She didn’t want to dwell on things she’d felt in the past. She didn’t want to be ashamed. She wanted to be beautiful and feel beautiful. She wanted to be as exquisite as Sylvanas had told her she was.

Because Sylvanas was watching her. 

“I want to come for you,” Jaina told her, letting the last word turn into a shuddering moan.

“It sounds like you might be close to that already,” Sylvanas said.

Through heavy-lidded eyes that she managed to crack open, Jaina saw her smiling with a cocky, fanged grin. “Maybe,” she breathed, rolling her hips against her fingers.

Sylvanas lost her words for a moment. Her gaze was intent. Concentrated. Not possessive, but somehow completely possessed by Jaina. By the movement of her hips. By the faint light of the room as it curved over her breasts. 

“I have...I have another revision to the experiment,” Jaina offered between shudders.

“Yes, Doctor Proudmoore?”

“Perhaps, we will achieve better results with two...simultaneous...experiments.”

Sylvanas hummed to that, a broken, keening sound threatening to come out instead, hiding just behind it. “I was hoping you might suggest that. See? You’re quite the scientist after all.”

“Mmm, please. I want to see you,” Jaina pleaded.

Sylvanas didn’t have to be asked again. She slid her legs apart, curling up at the knee to keep to her side of the bed and leave Jaina to hers, but enough to allow her to slide her own hand between them. Just enough for Jaina to see the way the light from her window caught on the slickness there before it was covered again.

“All this science talk has made a mess of me,” Sylvanas laughed as she too began bucking at her own ministrations. 

“I’m glad it works for both of us,” Jaina sighed out. 

She was getting very, very close. But at the same time, she didn’t want this to be over. Jaina let her hand continue to roam lazily over herself, tracing from her entrance to her clit and back again. She watched as Sylvanas’ worked faster than that, almost frantically, as the elf sighed and let her own eyelids flutter at the pleasure. 

“You’re gorgeous,” Jaina blurted out before another moan escaped her.

“Good word,” Sylvanas grunted.

“I think...I think my hypothesis is correct. You are wildly attractive. Even more so when you’re falling apart on my bed,” Jaina told her.

“And you get very toppy when you’re not the only one getting off, noted,” Sylvanas said. She slowed her pace a little, still working her hand.

Jaina just about lost it when she watched her sink two fingers into herself.

And from Sylvanas’ smile, she could tell.

“Let go with me. It’s okay. Remember, there’s no such thing as deserving,” Sylvanas whispered as she started to fuck herself.

Jaina’s breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. No, because breathing would ruin this. She could only exhale into one long, broken sigh. A moan. A cry. A wail. Relief washed over her as much as pleasure did. Wave after wave. Like a storm on an unbroken shore. Until her hand began to cramp up. Until Jaina felt as if she were going to be scattered into too many pieces. Like shells on the beach. Like all the screws falling out of another damn box of flat pack furniture.

In front of her, she was vaguely aware of Sylvanas coming in a series of hitched gasps, then very aware as she reached out for her, one hand still damp from herself. And then, really only fully aware as she came to herself, pulled tight against Sylvanas’ chest, still breathing hard, soft praises being whispered into the top of her head.

Jaina might have shed a tear or two into the black silk of her camisole, but neither of them mentioned it. Sylvanas just held her close and stroked at her hair, down her back, up her arms.

“That was exactly what I needed,” Jaina whispered once she found the words again.

“I’m very glad you asked me to conduct that experiment tonight,” Sylvanas told her. 

“Me too.”

Jaina realized she was in good range to get to Sylvanas’ chest and stomach now. She very much wanted to feel that skin against hers. As close as they were, it wasn’t enough for her then.

She hiked the camisole up without so much as a word, sliding her hand against the lines of Sylvanas’ abs, counting at the bottom of her ribs. Jaina looked up at her as she did so, smiling. Happy. Relieved. Fulfilled. Satisfied. 

Not in the way she really wanted. But, that was one thing she’d learned since leaving Arthas. One lesson she’d come by on her own. Something that hadn’t come from a book or a therapist. Or even a very sexy and very patient professor. No. Just from her. Just for her. 

Things didn’t always go the way they were planned. And sometimes, that was for the best.

Just as it did when she ran her hand up, just beneath where the hardness of Sylvanas’ sternum should have begun. Just under the curve of her breasts. And then found something odd. A divot. A dip in the flesh, and below it, hardened, smooth scar tissue.

Sylvanas had a fucking hole in her chest. Well, had had. It was closed now, obviously. But it was massive. Too massive.

Shock must have registered itself on Jaina’s face, even in her afterglow daze. 

“I had a run in with a piece of rebar about three years ago,” Sylvanas explained, still smiling herself. “Almost died. Well, actually, I did die. Three times, they tell me.”

Jaina snatched her hand back, clutching it to her own chest. “Oh my fucking God...Sylvanas! What happened?”

“I told you I ride a motorcycle? Well, some idiot ran me off the road. A drunk, probably, because he was in the wrong lane. I was laid up in a ditch at a construction site. I don’t know how long, just that it was night when the accident happened, and morning when the ambulance came,” Sylvanas told her.

“Were you awake the entire time?” Jaina asked. She was clinging tight to the bit of shirt she hadn’t pushed aside now with her other arm, which was just under Sylvanas’.

“On and off,” Sylvanas told her. “I just wanted to die then. But...I’m so glad I’m here now. Every day, I’m glad. Every day, I find more and more reasons that make all the recovery I went through to get up and walking and talking again worth it.”

Jaina was listening. She really was. But she was also doing math in her head. Horrible, horrible math.

“I think you might be one of them, Professor Proudmoore,” Sylvanas said as she placed a kiss on top of Jaina’s head.

“That’s awfully sweet of you to say,” Jaina said. 

No. She wasn’t going to do that math. She wasn’t going to think about how long ago it was that Arthas had gotten the DUI that ended his career as a defensive line coach at Lordaeron. She wasn’t going to think of the game calendar that she had memorized for him that year, of the notifications that she made sure popped up on both of their phones anyway. She wasn’t going to think of when they played Dalaran. About what time of year. 

She certainly wasn’t going to think about the time he’d told her that it could have been worse. When he was a case of beer deep, having lost his job because of those cases of beer. Cheap, disgusting skunk beer. Of how it smelled on his breath when he told her that at least the cops didn’t catch him earlier that night, when he’d run over a ‘stupid bitch on a motorcycle’.

No. Jaina wasn’t going to think about that. She was just going to breath in and out, quietly, calmly, against Sylvanas’ chest. Again the smile she pressed into her hair. Against the warm, steady hands that held her in just the right way.

“You okay?” Sylvanas asked.

“I’m great. I’m just glad you’re still here too,” Jaina answered.


	3. Shine/Kintsugi

It was Monday, and Jaina had spent the weekend in varying states of distress. She’d tried not to let it show. She was certain she’d gotten away with it when her students didn’t seem particularly upset about not getting their papers back as planned. God. The papers. She hadn’t even touched them.

Sylvanas had to leave for some conference early on Saturday morning, a fact Jaina had been both thankful for and utterly dreading. She’d been so wonderful about it, though, kissing her goodbye, then popping back up with coffee and newspapers from the corner store and stealing another kiss. 

Jaina didn’t read the newspaper, but it was sweet all the same.

But once she was gone, Jaina could finally break down. She could finally cry. She could finally be angry with herself for thinking that Arthas had just been telling another one of his drunk lies when he’d talked about the night of his last DUI. She could be furious with him for that casual admittance, and for still, somehow, fucking with her life even after they’d been apart for nearly a year. She could be even more enraged at herself for not leaving him as soon as he’d told her that, but he said so much dumb shit when he was drunk. How could she have known?

They say grief has stages. Jaina was well aware of them. She went through all of them and more in that weekend, while the essays sat unread in her inbox. 

For Jaina, the first stage of anything was always research. She liked research. She liked the way that libraries smelled, all musty and dry. Old, but not too old that they should be revered. Just old enough to be familiar. She didn’t have to visit one, though. Sadly. Everything had been recent enough that it was all still on the internet. An article in the college paper about the accident and the out-pouring of support for the injured professor. A date. And the day before it, another article discussing the game between Dalaran’s Wizards and Lordaeron’s Paladins. 

The Paladins lost.

It wouldn’t have been different if they won. Not back then, anyway. Arthas would have found his way to a bar with the rest of the coaching staff and stayed there long after they all went back to their hotel rooms. Someone might text Jaina about it in concern every now and then. Most of the time, they kept their mouths shut. 

So yes. The dates matched up. It was true. It was real. It was horrible. 

Then she got a text, in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday.

_I had a great time last night. Not sure if I told you that enough. Let me know anytime you want to run more experiments, even if they just stop at the beer and pizza part. I very much wish I could still be doing that, rather than sitting here and pretending to be interested in this conference._

Jaina had almost thrown the phone across the room when it buzzed on her coffee table. As if thinking about him would somehow allow Arthas to have obtained her third new phone number since she left him. But it was just Sylvanas. Just Sylvanas, being sweet and sexy and too good.

She had to think about her reply for a few minutes before she finally calmed down enough to type it.

_I feel the same way. You’re back in town Monday, right? Can we meet after class?_

_Isn’t there something about needing to play hard to get for a week or two? ;)_

_You’re back to being a smartass already, I see. What time are you finished?_

_My last lecture is at 4. Should be done around 5. Meet me there? It’s in the Silver Enclave Hall._

_I’ll be there._

For what, Jaina didn’t know. All she knew was that she needed to. She needed to be near this woman. Whether it was out of guilt or attraction or gratefulness, well, that remained to be seen. But she couldn’t deny that there was an all together truly magnetic pull between them. Something about fate that was cheesy enough for one of her horrible romance novels to base its flimsy plot around. 

Something stupid, but maybe wonderful and weird. Maybe, just maybe, kind of perfect, all things considered.

Stage two, was, of course, to deal with the fact that she’d finally gotten over, or at least partially, her sex issues. Even with all that had been racing through her mind that night, there was still plenty of quiet, mostly naked touching to be had thereafter. She’d spent the rest of that night tracing over the lines of Sylvanas’ body--fingers admiring the delicacy of her wrist, toying with the heavy watch that remained on it, even as they began to fall asleep on one another. 

She was back in bed a few hours later, laying in sheets that still smelled like Sylvanas. Jaina never texted first. It had always been Sylvanas that would start their conversations. But this was when that trend broke.

_How’s the conference going?_

_About to die a fourth time of boredom. In the middle of a dinner. Everyone here is trying to measure the length of their dick with the amount of papers they’ve published._

_Sounds horrific._

_It is. What about you?_

_Thinking about last night._

That much, at least, was very true. She’d been thinking about it all day. But now, with the lights off and the street lamp outside her window striping through the blinds again, Jaina found herself thinking, finally, about things other than the fact that her ex had to have been responsible for putting a hole in Sylvanas’ chest long before they’d ever met.

There was no response for a while. Still, it didn’t register to Jaina. She was allowing herself to slip into a daydream, or rather an evening dream, of gentle hands and soft lips and glistening fingers. That had really done her in, watching Sylvanas touch herself. She was suddenly very aware of the fact that she was getting wet thinking about it.

And then suddenly aware of the fact that her phone was buzzing on the bed next to her. 

She unlocked the screen and was greeted by a picture of Sylvanas. It was only just a small portion of her, just below her nose to just above her navel. A finger laid to her lips in a gesture of secrecy. The dark tiles of an unfamiliar bathroom behind her. Her black shirt open to the middle button, exposing a maroon-colored bra, but then hiding anything beneath it, including her scar. Tasteful, but sinful at the same time. Discreet enough that she could easily fix herself back up in seconds, but also hot enough that Jaina was immediately flustered in the best of ways.

_In case you wanted something to think about further. That’s the best I can do for now. Have to get back to pretending to care about this dinner. If this wasn’t what you wanted, then forget it ever happened._

_Oh. I won’t be forgetting, don’t worry. Enjoy your dinner._

Jaina took that as an invitation. She wasn’t of a mind to think of anything else right then. And it was probably for the best. Those things were harder to wrap her head around. This? This was getting to be easy when it came to Sylvanas.

So easy that her hand slipped beneath the waistband of her pajamas without further question. So easy that she got herself off in just a few minutes, rather than the hour long struggle that such actions would usually entail for her. So easy that she was going for a second time when it hit her again.

Arthas nearly killed this woman. This perfect, wonderful woman that was everything Jaina needed. He’d nearly fucked that up too.

But they’d survived. Both of them had.

Jaina sighed and wiped her hand against the sheets. She supposed she should be thankful enough to take small steps here. Honestly, there were worse things. Like changing the sheets. That wasn’t a fun prospect.

The third stage of grief there was to watch more nature documentaries instead of doing laundry. A different one, so as not to lose their place, but something that could fill the void for a while. Something that, oddly enough, made her feel a little less alone.

Sunday brought the fourth stage, which was manic grocery shopping. Her fridge had never been fuller. She made a massive breakfast for herself. Eggs. French toast. Bacon. Nevermind that it was already mid-afternoon by the time she got back and cooked it all. Nevermind that she had to pick up a frying pan on her way. Jaina hadn’t really cooked anything more complex than toast since she left Lordaeron. It was nice to know that she still remembered how.

Stage five was trying not to text Sylvanas too much that evening. 

_Are we still on for tomorrow?_

_Of course. How are your papers?_

_Not progressing very much, I’ll admit. But that’s okay. How is the conference?_

_Not progressive enough, but that’s okay. Would be much better if I had someone to consult on the merits of romance novels with me instead._

_You are too good at this._

_What?_

_Flirting._

_I’m not flirting. I’m legitimately bored. Truly._

_Uh huh._

Yeah, that didn’t go to plan. But Sylvanas didn’t seem to mind.

So it was then, on Monday, when Jaina arrived outside the main lecture theatre of Silver Enclave Hall at exactly 4:30, that she tried to tell herself that this was fine. All of this was fine. Everything was good. The past, for all parties considered, was just the past. The future was a very different thing. A very real thing. Something she could have on her own.

Something she could allow herself to have, maybe.

Jaina stood just outside the big double doors to the hall. Through the gap in-between them, she could hear the lecture that was still obviously going on. She was here obscenely early, so of course it was. 

A temptation rose inside of her, as these things often did. Jaina was so used to striking them down immediately, not even listening to such thoughts. But this one, she let have a moment of her attention. It told her she should go in. That she should sit in the back and watch.

She would just about die if Sylvanas did that in one of her lectures. So that made her hesitate. But somehow, she didn’t think Sylvanas would feel the same way. In fact, she’d probably be delighted. 

In reality, she was too busy to even notice Jaina slip into one of the open seats at the back of the hall. 

Sylvanas was walking across the stage as she flipped to the next slide in her presentation. A picture of a tree, and a picture of lumber, with no words or captions or anything else. 

She turned to the hall, slowly walking back across the stage as she went on, “So we can even look at decay for its influence on our culture. Take wood, for example. Why do we build things out of wood? Because it’s strong and relatively light and easy to produce? Sure. All of that is correct. But think about this. Durability.”

The screen changed again, this time showing a pagoda in Pandaria. 

“This pagoda is nearly two thousand years old. Much of it is still made up of the original wooden beams and joints. Why? Because of a little pesky polymer called lignin.”

The chemical structure of this flashed on screen next. Lots of hexagons with H’s, C’s, and O’s. Way beyond Jaina’s own rudimentary understanding of chemical structures. But she sure as hell could listen to Sylvanas explain that whole thing to her. The class seemed to agree. There had to be over a hundred undergrads scattered throughout the hall, and all of their eyes were on her as she paced back and forth in front of her slides.

“Lignin is a very difficult substance to decay, and wood is full of it. Only a few fungi have the ability to break it down properly. Sure, the monks that care for this pagoda have done their share of maintenance to keep it lasting as long as it has, but lignin did most of the work here. The reason we use wood for construction is because it’s cheap, it’s easy, and it lasts. It lasts because so few things can eat away at it.”

The screen flicked again to wooden beams that were rotten and sprouting mushrooms. 

“But...it doesn’t last forever,” Sylvanas continued. This time, she stopped in the middle of the stage, gesturing at the screen above here where the images were being projected. “You see, death and decay are inevitabilities for every organic substance. Even something as tough as lignin. There are several niche fungi that are specifically adapted to break it down.”

The screen flashed, this time to pictures of tree branches. To Jaina, they didn’t look particularly diseased, but the students in the hall seemed to be nodding along, as though this proved the rest of the point to them. 

“Phanerochaete, white rots, and even edible fungus like honey mushrooms and oyster mushrooms all attack even living trees, and are experts at breaking down lignin, while other decomposers like bacteria are ill-equipped to do so. Our proud structures crumble before the wrath of their tiny spores, even as indestructible as they might seem otherwise.”

Sylvanas paced again, but this time faded off into the darkness of the wings of the stage. The hall was set up like a theater. It was one of the older buildings on campus. Jaina knew it was often appropriated by the various drama clubs as a venue. The silver gilding that decorated the domed ceiling gave it a very posh, ancient air. But the blue paint between that gilding was faded and chipping. The seats were in a slight disarray, some with broken desk attachments, others with their cushions missing or with graffiti scrawled across their backs. The hall, while glorious in its time, was perhaps in need of renovation as much as anything else in the old University might have been. 

“But as I said, the rotting of our very foundations has its benefits,” Sylvanas continued from the darkness. Another slide flipped up on the screen. A picture of a modern city skyline.

Sylvanas emerged, holding a small section of steel I beam in her hands. “We find new ways to combat it. New technologies. New discoveries. The carbon cycle, and the inevitable death and destruction of the organic, forces us to understand it and overcome it. Sure, that means that even steel will crumble to rust some day. Concrete will crack and topple. Even the most sophisticated carbon fiber structures have their limits. But, what’s important to understand, not only for how the cycle itself functions, but for how we adapt to it, is that there is always something that comes after. Death and decay isn’t the end. In fact, for many things, it is the beginning.”

It was only then that she locked eyes with Jaina, when she went back to the podium and set her piece of steel down. Only then that she noticed her, and smiled, just briefly, before she wrapped up with, “Take our example of wood decay. It creates so many possibilities, and those have such an influence on our culture. As I mentioned before, some of the fungi involved are edible. If you haven’t tried oyster mushrooms, I highly recommend them, by the way. So even if it destroys our homes, well, we can eat the results. And it’s not just us. Thousands of innumerable microorganisms benefit from the byproducts of this decay. Every rotten log you’ve ever come across in the forest is an ecosystem in and of itself, all supported by this simple process of breaking down lignin and other chemical compounds found in wood. An ecosystem which sustains more things we depend on, like insects and thus, insectivores, and so on. Not to mention, again, our attempts to overcome this as we search for better building materials that are more resistant to organic decay.”

The slide flipped once again, to a picture of a textbook, and next to it, some chapter numbers. “So it is regrettably time for me to say that, with that in mind, I will ask you to review chapters 23 and 24 in your texts before the next lecture, where we will talk about the nitty gritty chemical aspects of this decay process and why it is that fungi excel at it. Keep in mind, though, the possibilities that this creates. And remember that for some things, death is only the beginning.”

The class ended with a collective groan over the required reading, but after that, just quiet murmurs and the sound of laptops and notebooks rustling their way back into bags. With creaking desks being flipped back up and sneakers squeaking against the old wooden floors.

Jaina stayed in her seat as she watched a small line of students form up to go to Sylvanas with questions. Sylvanas answered these in turn, patiently and passionately, as she sat down on the edge of the stage. 

It didn’t take long for her to get through the cluster of students. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe a little after five, but Jaina wasn’t counting. She was too busy watching her. How genuine she was. How excited she was. The light in her soft grey eyes as she explained. The laughter of the students as she cracked a horrible little joke about fungus. 

Only when the last student had started to leave the hall did she stand. Only when the door shut behind them did she make her own way down to the stage, which Sylvanas sat waiting for her.

“I didn’t know you had such a keen interest in wood decay or mycology,” Sylvanas quipped as she got closer, smiling as she leaned forward, elbows on the knees of her slacks.

“I honestly think I could listen to you read the dictionary and still be very entertained,” Jaina told her. “You’re a wonderful teacher, by the way.”

“I’m just a nerd with a captive audience,” Sylvanas said. 

“A very beautiful nerd,” Jaina offered as she slid her hip in between Syvlanas’ knees, parting them enough for her to turn and face her. 

“Is that what this visit was about then?” Sylvanas asked as Jaina’s hands came up to cradle the sides of her face, brushing against the plastic frames of her glasses.

“Are we a possibility? Continuing this? Maybe making it into something more?” Jaina asked, leaning in as if to kiss her. But she held back, waiting for that answer.

It hadn’t mattered before. It hadn’t mattered until just now, really. She suddenly had to know. Suddenly, impermanence was not enough. A fling was not enough. Just sex was not enough. 

Sylvanas leaned into one of her hands before supporting it with one of her own. Cool, slender fingers trailed across the back of Jaina’s palm before they spread out and hovered over her own digits. “I would venture to say that we are an inevitability, even.”

Sylvanas leaned forward then to kiss her. She didn’t have to be asked. She didn’t need a hint. She was just responding to that pull, perhaps the same one that Jaina felt, that seemed to continually draw them together. Maybe. Or maybe Jaina was imagining things. Maybe she had read too many trashy romance novels lately.

Or maybe, she had finally found the right person, after so much time trying to figure out what was wrong.

Sylvanas laughed into the kiss, a buzzing sensation that chattered against Jaina’s teeth. She was nearly teetering off the stage, but caught herself on the edge of it. “I wanted nothing more to escape that conference to be with you instead this weekend. Clearly, I should have done so.”

“No. You had your own life to live before I crashed drunkenly into it. Your own plans. Still, I appreciate that you felt that way,” Jaina whispered against her lips.

“You’re being very forthcoming about your feelings today,” Sylvanas said as she slipped off the edge of the stage and stood on steady ground. 

“I’ve been told it’s the healthy thing to do. All the rage in therapy and whatnot,” Jaina said.

Sylvanas just offered a warm smile to this and took Jaina’s now empty hand. “As much as I’d love to live out my undergrad fantasies of making out in an empty lecture hall, I think I would rather celebrate such openness by having you come back to my place to have dinner with me. Does that sound like a possibility you would like to entertain?”

It did. It really did.

\---

Sylvanas lived in one of the old victorians just off campus, near the old downtown strip, because of course she did. While the other homes around hers, likely belonging to fellow tenured professors or long-time admin staff, were painted with delicate pastels, hers was a deep maroon color. The trim was a defiant black against the mostly white outlines of her neighbors. But somehow, in the shade of the old sycamores and sugar maples, dappling the sunlight with their autumn finery, the dark colors didn’t look out of place. 

In fact, Jaina surmised that they might have been more traditional to how the house had been painted, back when it was first built. 

The interior of the house was much the same. Sylvanas took her coat in a dark wood-paneled foyer, and hung it on an old wooden coat rack. She asked her to sit for a moment in what could only be called a parlor, with its fireplace and plush leather chairs and towering bookshelves. She brought her a glass of wine and took Jaina’s hand to give her a tour.

And that’s where the traditional ended. Well, sort of. 

“I’m afraid that my place is perhaps too oozing with personality,” Sylvanas warned as they went back into that dark hall again. “Some might say that it’s also oozing with ghosts, but that’s half the charm of these victorians. Really, if you hear anything strange, it’s just the house slowly falling apart on me and causing me to spend another ridiculous amount of money to fix it.”

But then they were at the end of that hall. And there was a soft light showing from where a kitchen would normally be, against the back of the house. The sun had nearly set, but not enough that Jaina couldn’t fully appreciate the greenhouse. Or sun porch. Maybe a solarium. Whatever you wanted to call it. It was beautiful and filled to the brim with plants. 

Plants on shelves. Plants in a little pond made up of a giant ceramic bowl in the center of the room. Whole trees contained in pots and dotting the corners of the room. Was that a lemon on one of them? Plants, mostly, that Jaina couldn’t name or even guess. 

“Let me guess, this is your favorite room in the house?” Jaina asked.

“Second favorite,” Sylvanas answered. “But only just.”

As she listened to Sylvanas name the plants and explain them, only when asked, of course, Jaina couldn’t help but be jealous of how easy it was for the other woman to just offer her soul up so easily. She barely knew Jaina. They’d met only a few short weeks ago in a failed drunken hook up. Yet here she was, telling Jaina about how she’d raised this particular rare variety of fern from a sample she took on a hike in Silverpine. Or similarly admitting that this lovely succulent collection in the corner here had been impulse purchased from a hardware store a week ago, and thus none of the credit for its loveliness could go to her.

But it was clear that there was something so entirely personal, so necessary to Sylvanas about this room. About this house. About everything. Yet, she was more than willing to share it. She didn’t feel the need to hide. Even her worst hour, her greatest pain, she had admitted as freely to Jaina as if she had been telling her what her favorite color was. 

Jaina could hardly understand it. She was so used to the opposite. So used to keeping the truth inside of herself. So used to white walls and beige carpets and someone else’s furniture. 

They stopped in the actual kitchen after that, which was further off to the side than expected, to refill their wine glasses. This was completely stark and modern. Clean. Stainless steel and white quartz and black cabinets. Stark and beautiful. 

“It’s the one place I hate to have cluttered,” Sylvanas explained.

“The kitchen? Really? I imagined you to be the type of cook that just tosses things together and makes a masterpiece, but leaves an awful mess in their wake,” Jaina told her.

Jaina liked to think herself somewhere in between. That she liked to be orderly about her cooking. Her kitchen, still reeling from the Sunday breakfast bonanza, would think otherwise.

“I have devoted enough of my life to the study of bacteria and fungi to have a heavy respect for them. My kitchen is to remain spotless for that very reason, please and thank you,” Sylvanas continued.

They found an actual living room after that. This was still very much a professor’s house, with more bookshelves and oddities dotting the mantle, but there was a TV mounted above it at least, and a comfortable couch and loveseat set around a coffee table. Clearly, a place where she brought students, as there were other various seating implements scattered in the corners, ready to be dragged over if needed. Bean bags. Arm chairs. A folding stool.

The dining room, Sylvanas explained, had been sacrificed in her last renovation. The kitchen table and counter were enough.

“I’m still wondering what that favorite room is,” Jaina said as they started up the grand staircase, with its solid wood banisters.

“You’ll see,” Sylvanas answered with a smile. 

It was her office. Without a doubt. Jaina knew that the second she opened the door. From the impish grin on Sylvanas’ face, to the dark, but cozy interior of the room. An antique desk with an expensive laptop sitting on it. A moss garden in a dish on a table next to it. A console that acted as a filing cabinet, maybe. On top of it, a vivarium. Within its artificially lighted confines, a dark-colored snake poked his head out from a log and flicked a black tongue into the air. 

“I’m not feeding you,” Sylvanas said to him as she passed by the cage. “So you can stop the charade now.”

“What’s his name?” Jaina asked as she drew closer to the glass. 

“Varimathras. He’s a greedy little thing,” Sylvanas answered. “He knows he gets fed on Tuesdays. I’d let you hold him, but he might be bitey if he’s looking for his rat already.”

“Such a long name for a little snake. Sounds like something from a book,” Jaina noted as she gave the little snake one more glance. He didn’t seem all that aggressive to her, but she knew little about their behavior, and certainly not enough to judge.

If anything, he just seemed interested in her.

“You would know,” Sylvanas replied with a smirk, then turned back to Jaina. “You’re not afraid?”

“Of snakes? Do I seem like I’d be?” Jaina asked.

“I don’t know. Most people don’t like them,” Sylvanas shrugged.

“It’s just another animal,” Jaina said. “And honestly, he’s pretty cute.”

Sylvanas smiled warmly at her, but didn’t say anything else. In fact, she didn’t say anything unless it was just to answer a question Jaina had. And for her part, Jaina felt comfortable asking them. What kind of skull was this on the shelf, being resigned now to an afterlife as a bookend? What was this book that apparently Sylvanas had written right next to it? What were those medals for? 

A fox. A field guide to the edible mushrooms of Quel’thalas. Scholarly awards of various names and places and colleges and foundations that Jaina didn’t know. 

Again, a soul so easily bared. Secrets that would have taken years to pry from anyone else given freely to whoever asked.

Or maybe it was just because Jaina was the one asking.

The master bedroom was notably skipped. Perhaps saved for later. Perhaps done so strategically to make sure that they would indeed get to dinner.

Dinner, which was a quick green curry that Sylvanas whipped up. Chicken, snow peas, carrots, peppers in a slightly spicy sauce over rice. She cleaned as she cooked, and served Jaina at the bar stools on her kitchen island. She ate standing up at the other end of the island, still ushering dishes into the dishwasher between bites. 

“No mushrooms?” Jaina noticed halfway into her curry. “I’m surprised.”

“Not today. Though we can check the shed in the morning to see if any are ready for omelettes,” Sylvanas said matter-of-factly.

“I’m not sure if you’re fucking with me or if you actually have a shed where you grow your own mushrooms,” Jaina said as she waved a forkful of chicken accusingly at Sylvanas.

“It was too dark for a proper tour by the time we got here. I do, indeed, have a mushroom shed. It is also where I keep my lawnmower, if you must know,” Sylvanas answered. 

“Do you feed all your dates from your mushroom shed or is that a privilege I have to earn first?” Jaina countered.

She loved this. The bursts they had of quick back and forth. The questions and answers and more questions. At first, she feared it would get exhausting, but Jaina only found herself energized every time they got started. 

“That depends. Are you a date, then?” Sylvanas asked as she took Jaina’s bowl from her as soon as she’d scraped up the last stray grain of rice.

“I don’t know,” Jaina answered truthfully. “I thought about it all weekend. I just...I really like you. You’ve been so patient with me when you didn’t even need to be. Even without that, I think we really have a connection.”

She had debated telling Sylvanas exactly what that connection entailed. Exactly what she had spent the first half of her weekend pouring over and confirming. She had psyched herself up to do it, but now, Jaina wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure if she could bare her soul as much as Sylvanas was willing to.

And she wasn’t sure if Sylvanas would resent her for it even if she didn’t.

“I have to agree,” Sylvanas said as she leaned over to the counter to kiss Jaina, and swiped her thumb at a stray bit of curry that must have lingered under her bottom lip. 

She tasted like wine and coconut milk this time. Jaina couldn’t get enough of it. 

She decided then that, perhaps, the topic of just exactly who has caused Sylvanas to almost die was a discussion for another day.

Sylvanas laughed again as Jaina chased after the kiss. As she said, “Hold that thought,” and put their empty wine glasses in the dishwasher before turning it on and leading Jaina out of the kitchen, which looked as if they’d never even set foot in it, somehow.

Her bedroom was soft and dark, much like the rest of the house. This room was a mix of old and new. A new bed frame, with one of those quilted headboards in all black, but an old sewing table for a nightstand. A steamer trunk at the foot of it. A bluetooth speaker on top of an old wardrobe, that played modern jazz, softly, at the flick of Sylvanas’ finger over the screen of her phone. Very much perfectly her. 

Which was why it was surprising to Jaina that she sat on the bed and said, “Can we talk? Before anything else happens?”

Jaina’s stomach sank. She knew there was little chance that Sylvanas would want to talk about that, but she was suddenly regretting the decision she made back in the kitchen.

She couldn’t have known, right? Jaina hadn’t even said his name.

“We can talk,” she answered anyway as she sat.

Only Sylvanas didn’t seem to want to talk. She reached for Jaina’s hand with her own, but then didn’t grasp it. Instead, she traced the tips of her fingers over it, outlining each of Jaina’s own digits with hers before offering it a squeeze and letting go entirely.

Only then did she speak, “I want you to know something very important, all right? Something that I feel like you need to hear.”

Jaina laughed nervously at this, curry spice bubbling up in her throat a bit unpleasantly as she did. “You can tell me whatever you want. You’ve done so much for me. I can do something for you.”

“It’s still for you,” Sylvanas said. She grabbed for Jaina’s hand again, actually holding it this time as she sighed out, “I want you to know that intimacy for us doesn’t have to involve anything like sex. It can be as much as a conversation, or a hug. As little as a look between us. That you have the right to have a relationship like that. That you should feel comfortable and not obligated to do anything more.”

Jaina let out a sigh of relief, and with it, a gentle smile. Good. This was a topic she felt she could talk about now. That finally, she was ready.

The other one, not so much.

“And if I do want sex? Even if I know that I don’t owe you anything? Even if I very much appreciate that you took the time to make that clear?”

“Then I can’t say that I’d mind at all. You are stunning. I have been thinking about you since I left your place that morning.”

The answer was simple and precise. Sylvanas didn’t ramble on more than that. She didn’t go anywhere that might have been uncomfortable for either of them. She just wanted Jaina to know she found her attractive and that all of this, all of the oddness of their meeting and continued meetings thereafter, was not too much for her.

And that was all Jaina needed from her right then.

She leaned it to kiss her as the mattress squeaked a little beneath them. A soft, dark kiss from a soft woman with a hint of darkness to her that Jaina had never found unappealing. The snake, the plants, the antiques, and not to mention the scientific obsession with death itself. She could feel it all now, surrounding her much like the old victorian house, wrapping them in a cool, dark blanket. Things that might repel others, but instead offered a refuge for those that would hide in them. A somewhat lonely and strange comfort.

But Jaina found she liked it very much.

The kiss ended with their legs swung onto the bed and Jaina on top of Sylvanas. With platinum hair spread on a charcoal grey pillowcase, finally free of its bindings. Today’s had been a simple, loose bun. Thankfully easy to undo. And the results? So very worth it. Sylvanas’ hair was as silky as Jaina had imagined it to be. Longer, though. It fanned all the way to the edges of the pillow. 

“Can we get these out of the way?” she asked.

These being Sylvanas’ glasses. Simple, black frames, bordering between thin and thick. 

“By all means,” Sylvanas answered with a toothy smirk, apparently not at all put off by being the one on her back.

Jaina gently lifted them off of her face, careful of the long ears they curved around. Even still, they flicked gently and the briefest brush of contact with her hands. She hadn’t been with an elf in a long time. She’d forgotten how sensitive those ears were.

What a funny thought. Before Arthas, she had done her fair share of dating. Even plenty of one night stands and a few friends with benefits situations. Even early in her relationship with him, sex had been something that Jaina owned. Something she was apparently pretty good at. Something that she had very much enjoyed.

She couldn’t put a date on the day that was taken from her. It wasn’t something she could look up in the papers or research. It had been a slow, gradual thing. 

She drowned those thoughts out with kisses as she set the glasses aside on the end table, peppering Sylvanas’ neck with them beneath one of those sensitive ears.

Underneath her, the elf’s shoulders shifted. Jaina sat back to see why. Sylvanas let out a breathy sigh as she slipped off her watch and set it on the table next to the glasses.

“You never took that off before,” Jaina noted curiously.

“I don’t take it off anywhere but here,” Sylvanas told her. “If I lose it in my own house, I’ll find it again eventually. Let’s say the night ended sour at yours and I was in a hurry to leave and forgot it. I’d never see it again.”

“Hmm,” Jaina hummed. “Was it your dad’s?”

“My mom’s. And my grandfather’s before her,” Sylvanas told her.

Jaina didn’t press for further details. That was already a lot. So much, even, that she could hardly take it in. People were such complex things, with their relationships, wanted or unwanted. Blood or chosen. They spun out like webs from everyone, then all interconnected into a great knot. Untangling it was impossible. Thinking further beyond this moment was perhaps a little impractical.

“Thank you,” was what she settled on as she leaned back down over Sylvanas.

“For what?”

“Telling me that,” Jaina said. She brought her hand down to stroke her thumb lazily over Sylvanas’ now bare wrist.

She was beautiful. Pale hair and pale eyes in contrast to the darkness around them. Beautiful like this in an entirely different way than she was before, in her oxford shirts and rolled up sleeves. Vulnerable, even, but welcoming that. Like she knew. Like she knew that she could do both, and it was a power that Jaina both lusted for and wanted to emulate.

“How are you so good?” she asked as Sylvanas’ hand came to rest on her cheek, with her own hand still attached to her slender wrist. 

“Therapy helped. Believe it or not, I was a bit of an asshole in my early life. But a lot of things changed that. Even before the accident I told you about,” Sylvanas said as she thumbed along Jaina’s lower lip.

“A rogue mycologist with an attitude and a motorcycle to match. Hmm, I could see that,” Jaina joked. 

She could, though. Who wasn’t an asshole, really, when they were young and dumb and didn’t know better? Jaina was sure plenty of people had considered her one, back when she was rushing her sorority and dating between football players. But people can change. People can become better. Sometimes, they can become worse.

Jaina had learned that it was the people who never changed, though, that were the worst of them all.

“More like a vain, perpetual student who was in danger of becoming the type of academic we love to hate,” Sylvanas admitted. 

She pulled Jaina down onto her now. Their bodies were flush with each other, warm even through their thick, fall clothes. 

“I wasn’t always excited about mushrooms either,” Sylvanas told her. “I have another doctorate in philosophy.”

“I know,” Jaina admitted. Finally. It felt good to admit something. “I may or may not have searched for you. A lot.”

And there were a lot of results. Rate my professor reviews. Scientific papers. Textbooks she’d co-authored. Ongoing research projects she contributed to. Even a book of poetry.

Sylvanas just laughed at that. “Good, then we have all that bullshit out of the way.”

“You can still tell me,” Jaina said with another, gentle kiss. “When I said I could listen to you read the dictionary before, I meant it. Only, I would very much be interested in anything you had to tell me about yourself.”

“Is that so?” Sylvanas questioned, her ears lifting at that and the hand that she slid up Jaina’s side and just a little bit under her blouse, questioning, asking permission in her own little non-verbal way.

Jaina pressed herself into that hand as an answer. “You’ve already shared so much with me. Even just bringing me back here. Answering my questions. All that just leaves me hungry for more. You’re hot and you’re fascinating and you’re kind and frankly that’s all a little unfair to the rest of us mere mortals.”

Sylvanas chuckled at that. A deep, warm laugh that radiated through Jaina, catching her up in it as they shook together.

The mattress squeaked out another protest in kind.

“I have my flaws too,” Sylvanas told her with a bold kiss against the corner of her jaw. A bit of teeth and suction that was just barely not enough to leave a mark.

Jaina gasped at the sensation, but found herself relaxing further into Sylvanas soon after. “I haven’t found any yet, aside from a love of dark colors and a flare for the dramatic.”

“Those are my chief issues, I suppose,” Sylvanas agreed.

Jaina hazarded a guess that Sylvanas wouldn’t mind her letting her hips roll as they pleased, even if that meant she was pushed further into the complaining mattress. She did not. It only let Jaina be rewarded by one of those self-satisfied smirks she was growing to adore.

“You know, don’t you? How attractive you are? I think you still have some of that vanity left to you,” Jaina pointed out.

But she didn’t mind. She didn’t mind at all. That confidence was precisely what she found so damn enticing about the other woman anyway.

Sylvanas didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. She did know. She showed Jaina just how much she knew with how much she could get her to squirm and sigh with just a few light kisses against her pulse point and her fingers counting their way up her ribs. 

Jaina only remembered the music that was playing softly in the background when the bassline thrummed slowly in time with her heart for a moment. And that’s what this was. A slow, deliberate dance. Practiced to turn into something beautiful. And even though Jaina was on top, she was content to let herself be led from below.

Outside, the sun had completely set. Unlike Jaina’s more commercial street, Sylvanas’ street lamps didn’t pervade the sanctity of her room. When Jaina moved to flick the push switch on the lamp at the bedside table to off, thankfully, they were drowned in velvet darkness. A home that she was unfamiliar with, yet comfortable in. Darkness used to scare her. But only when she was alone.

And she was decidedly not alone.

“I’ve had some ideas, while I was thinking about you this weekend,” she said as she pulled herself fully back on top of Sylvanas again.

“Oh?” 

Even just one word could be a question. Jaina understood now. Maybe. Sylvanas kept asking questions until she had the information she wanted. If Jaina didn’t volunteer it, then she would keep asking. If Jaina stopped answering, she would stop asking. But until that limit was reached, she would ask for more. And Jaina would try to give it. 

But this time, she would leave a little to surprise. “Your bathroom is off to the left?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, stay here then. I’ll be back,” Jaina promised. 

With another creak of the mattress and another laugh shared, she managed to roll off of Sylvanas with some elegance and onto her feet. Jaina fumbled across to the doorway she’d scope out before, which was thankfully only a few strides away. She flicked the lightswitch on after more fumbling, then closed the door.

The bathroom was done up in dark tiles. Black with brushed stainless steel. The devil to the kitchen’s angel. Of course.

But Jaina wasn’t here to admire the architecture. She was here to be able to see the various buttons and clasps that held her clothes on. The walls of fabric that had stood between her and Sylvanas, and her current self and that past she so very badly wanted to reclaim, not to mention a future with this woman, who seemed more than open to the idea.

But Jaina tried not to think too hard. She simply tossed her blouse and slacks over the black marble of the vanity. Her bra landed in the sink. Her panties might have caught themselves on the faucet. It didn’t matter, though. 

She shut the lights and stepped back into the darkened bedroom, blinded again. 

“You’re still there?”

“I haven’t moved a bit,” Sylvanas answered in the inky blackness. 

Jaina could only just see the shine of her eyes from afar, and that was enough to guide her forward. “Stay there still.”

Her knees hit the edge of the bed first. The comforter was a soft satiny material that crinkled a little against bare skin. Jaina reached out to find Sylvanas’ shirt, a few buttons undone in their earlier adventures of the evening. From there, she navigated to her shoulder, and used that to steady herself as she swung up to straddle her again.

Questioning hands helped her, then slid up bare thighs. Thumbs hooked themselves to where the waistband of her panties would have been, had she still been wearing them. But she was not. 

Because if she had a problem with people undressing her, well, then Jaina decided that was an easy enough thing for her to solve herself. Because she didn’t at all have a problem with her bare legs rubbing up against Sylvanas’ dockers, or the stray buttons of her shirt catching against the underside of her breasts. 

“Oh.”

This was most definitely not a question, but a statement.

“Do you want me to undress?” Sylvanas eventually asked, hands still on Jaina’s thighs, kneading lightly at them with a patience that belied that shaking anticipation in her voice.

“I want you to touch me,” Jaina told her.

She didn’t know how. She didn’t care how. She felt safe and warm and fine. There was no dread. No fear. Even without the light, even without the orange glow of the street lamps. No. She knew that this was where she belonged. If there was any place she could heal, truly, it was in the dark.

“All right,” Sylvanas breathed.

She made her way up Jaina’s thighs so slowly, all the while peppering her with kisses below and murmuring little praises into her ear. Of how she was so brave. Of how she too was interesting and good. 

And then of how soft and wonderful she felt as Sylvanas began to trace along from the crook of her thighs and in toward her center.

“Okay?” she asked only once.

“Yes,” Jaina answered breathlessly.

A testing swipe across her was enough to let Sylvanas know that she was more than ready for this. That Jaina was as wet as she could be. That their conversation and slow kissing had been the intimacy she needed, yes, but that even more would be appreciated. That she was ready for it. So ready.

Jaina couldn’t help but let out a long, steady groan at the second swipe of those fingers, firmer and wetter than the one before. Those that followed were slow and testing, sliding from her clit to her entrance. Reading her. Mapping her. 

But to Jaina, it was like heaven. It had been so long since she’d been touched by someone else. Longer still since it felt this way. Since it wasn’t a separate thing between body and mind. Since she didn’t have to go somewhere else. Since she could just be present in the moment, feeling that touch, smelling Sylvanas’ laundry detergent on her clothes, listening to her own breath hitch in time with the music and the other woman’s as she took her time exploring Jaina with two graceful fingers.

“Inside,” was the only word Jaina could think to plead after a few more minutes of this.

“All right,” Sylvanas said against her lips, kissing her deeply as she thrust her fingers up, sinking the same two into Jaina as slowly and as deliberately as she’d done anything else.

As much as she wanted it, it was a shock at first. Shivers traveled up Jaina’s spine, wracking her as she adjusted. Sylvanas didn’t move for a moment. She stilled, letting Jaina get used to the sensation of her.

But when she did? God. It was so good. All of this was. Jaina started to rock against her, forcing Sylvanas’ palm to brush up against her and send another wave of pleasure through her that curled her toes. She questioned even if sex had ever felt like this. Even back when it had been good for her. Before.

But before was a thing of the past. Jaina, or so she had decided, was going to commit to living in the present.

“Keep going,” Sylvanas encouraged as she curled her fingers slightly, pushing forward.

Jaina was already nearly seeing stars. But she decided she liked this. She liked being on top, in control, even if she was the one receiving otherwise.

She could deal with that.

So she canted her hips again and again after that. She bent to let Sylvanas kiss her. And she kept going until she couldn’t stop herself. Until she was on the verge of coming against Sylvanas’ hand. Until she could feel the resistance against those fingers as Sylvanas had to work harder to keep them pumping in her.

“It’s okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you,” Sylvanas panted against her.

And that was true. It was all so true. It was perfect and real and there was nothing that could stop her now, so Jaina came. She let herself go, rocking against Sylvanas’ hand as if there was nothing in the world preventing her from doing so. Because there wasn’t. Not anymore.

She muffled her moans into the damp shoulder of an oxford shirt. Whether it was damp from tears or sweat or saliva alone, no one mentioned. No one cared. In fact, Sylvanas’ eternal questions were stilled to a stunned silence as Jaina came down, panting softly in the dark. Though it wasn’t so dark anymore. 

Jaina could just barely make out the shape of a smile on Sylvanas’ face when she opened her eyes. A soft, full-lipped one. Proud, maybe. 

“Fuck,” she laughed against that damp shoulder.

“I think we did just that,” Sylvanas informed her sagely.

“Yeah, I guess we kinda did,” Jaina acknowledged. “But I had a really good time. I think you know that well enough.”

Her fingers were still in her. No one seemed to care or mind. 

Or at least, not until Sylvanas moved them in and out again, slowly. “We could keep doing that, you know?”

“What about you?” Jaina asked even as she started to meet those thrusts again.

“My dear Professor Proudmoore, there will be plenty of nights for me. Or plenty of this night, but later. Let’s celebrate you for now, hmm?”

"All right."

Celebrating Jaina, it turned out, took a minimum of three orgasms. Even though the last one took much longer than the two before, Sylvanas wasn’t satisfied until she was. Nor was she until Jaina had a glass of water after all that. 

It turned out that there was a TV somewhere in that room. And that when Sylvanas got back into bed with that glass of water, she was similarly stripped of her clothes. She bundled them up under the covers and turned the TV on to the exact episode of the nature documentary they had left off on. Only then did she let Jaina slide in behind her and reach around to touch her. 

Only then did Jaina find out just how wet she had been this whole time, when she was trapped still in her dockers and their thick leather belt. Only then did Jaina learn just how quickly Sylvanas could fall apart too, and how much she remembered enjoying getting another woman off. It had been nearly a dozen years. 

Only then did she remember why she used to like sex. Why it used to make her feel powerful. This? This beautiful woman breathing heavy in her arms, eyes half-lidded as she looked up at her in reverence? This was nothing short of magic.

In the morning, they had mushroom omelettes before heading off to their separate classes. With chives from the greenhouse, and Oyster mushrooms, grown on decomposing logs in the mushroom shed, which was nothing short of amazing, educational, and, in the end, delicious.

A little sinful. A little over-indulgent. A little out of her comfort zone, maybe, before she took the first bite. But exactly what Jaina needed.

\---

_Dinner at mine again tonight?_

Jaina’s phone buzzed with the message as soon as she got home from her afternoon class. Tuesdays ended early for her, and she was back in her own suddenly too stark apartment just after two in the afternoon. 

_I would love nothing more._

It was true. She was going to ask to see Sylvanas again either way. In fact, this was going to be a problem. She just wanted to see her again nearly every minute of that day. Jaina had even entertained the idea of trying to track her down for lunch, but it had seemed maybe a little too clingy, a little too severe, even for her.

Even for whoever she was becoming now.

_I’m busy until six today, but then I’m all yours. Do you remember how to get here?_

_I’ll manage. See you after six._

That was fine. She could wait. She had something she needed to do before then anyway.

The windows outside painted a picture of a beautiful autumn day. Breezy and a little cool, but beautiful otherwise. The trees lining the shopping street Jaina lived on had fiery leaves that still held onto their branches. Not much longer now before they too would fall. Students milled about, going to late lunches or headed to bookstores and cafes and bars. Life went on around her, and for once, Jaina didn’t feel so apart from it. She didn’t feel like the stream of it flew by without her. Rather, that she too could flow with the water. That she could change.

So with that, she threw open the door to the second bedroom of her little flat.

There was no furniture in there. No bed. No nightstand. No dresser. Nothing for guests. Nothing to accommodate another person in her life. No. It was just the boxes. Just a stack of maybe ten or so cardboard boxes, blank and brown and devoid of any labeling. 

Jaina typed in a quick search on her phone as she opened the first one. It was a flash of blue and gold. Lordaeron colors. Paladins pendants and hoodies and flags. Pictures of herself with people that had let all of this go on, knowing exactly how bad it had been, but choosing to ignore it all the same. Things she should have gotten rid of long ago. People she should have distanced herself from before that even. Things that she couldn’t bear to destroy, lest she want to go back to a life where she pretended that they mattered to her in. 

But no, she wasn’t ever going back there. That Jaina, whoever she had been? She was gone. She was so long gone. And now, it was time to mourn her.

She pulled out one item from the haphazard pile in the cardboard. A blue jersey with white letters with gold borders. On the back, where the name would be, “Mrs. Menethil” read starkly, as shining white as the day she’d received it from the team when Arthas had proposed to her in what had been a brief, failed engagement. They’d broken it off, but stayed together. 

So many times, she’d stayed. So many times, she didn’t let herself think that there was anything else out there for her. But she’d known even then. She’d known she could do better.

Jaina pressed the screen of her phone a few times, following the prompts and dialing the numbers as directed. She tossed the jersey in the box and then the phone started ringing.

The other end picked up with a strange woman’s voice, “Dalaran PD tip line.”

“Yes, hi there. I’d like to offer some information about an old hit and run case. What do you need from me?” Jaina asked her.

Because she would be the one to ask the questions now. Questions and questions, because that's how you got answers. From yourself, and from anyone else. Because there was no way she was going to go back to not asking those questions. To not answering for herself. 

Because there was so much more out there. Because she wasn’t dead yet. Or perhaps she was. Or at least, the person she had been before was.

But the afterlife, she had found out, wasn't so bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for putting up with yet another self-indulgent AU. I promise now I'll update the longfics :)


End file.
